I’m American so I don’t think we have any such thing so it’s hard for me to wrap my head around.
[The Wikipedia page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_service?wprov=sfti1#) makes it sound like it’s all non elected government employees, but it’s hard for me to imagine a single exam that you need to pass to become a post office worker or a DMV worker or something like that.
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It’s a competency test for things like showing an ability to understand and follow instructions and/or knowledge related to specific fields and the test subject[s] varies with the position.
US Federal/State/County/Municipalities often has these.
There is not a single exam.
For instance, in the state of Massachusetts we issue a civil service exam to police officers, correctional officers and firefighters.
The United States Postal Service has *four* different entry-level exams depending on the position.
Many public positions require employees to take a training course, and pass an exam, on things like ethics, security, and the legal requirements of their job.
They’re a way to make sure that the people being paid for in part by taxes are qualified to perform their job.
You do need to take a test to work at the Post Office. They want to make sure you don’t mix up numbers, etc.
so, “civil service” covers everyone form the characters in Parks and Recreation, though the boss of the local DMV, to the guy that briefs the President about the expected damage of an incoming hurricane. its a diverse collection of public officials, with often diverse job requirements and thus entry standards.
The “civil service examinations” are often prominent in countries and times were the civil service was open to basically everyone with the education to attempt them, and was a gateway into a comfortable, well to do lifestyle. Thus, these exams were seen as a major path to social advancement by the better off elements of the lower classes, and both massively over-subscribed and fiercely competitive.
Passing these exams was seen as a mark of real capability, given how selective they could afford to be. sort of the “my son is a doctor” vibes, but the son is instead in charge of the power grid for half the province or something similar.
You see this in places like the British and Chinese empires, where the promise of wealth and power the exams offered were a way to “pay off” local power groups by giving them a way into the “in crowd”, and also channelling their best and most capable people into serving the empire, rather than plotting for its demise.
A lot of jurisdictions in America have similar tests. They are by no means the only requirement for the job but they established that for most civil service jobs, you at least need basic math and reading skills. Those are the sorts of things they tend to test for in a civil service exam. It just weeds out people who are grossly unqualified for these jobs so you don’t have to waste time actually interviewing them.
The US has 51+ civil services. It’s the Federal/State/local/other government employees who aren’t elected.
Let’s start with something you have probably heard of: the bar exam. People who have graduated law school take an exam to prove that they know enough about state and federal law to be legally authorized to help clients. You pass, you can advertise yourself as an attorney. You fail, you cannot. Passing the exam is a big deal and people stress over it a great deal, take special prep classes, etc.
The civil service is just (*) a fancy name for all the bureaucratic jobs in all the government agencies. If you apply for a job they screen and measure you by various criteria, and one of those might be taking an exam to prove that you know what’s on your resume, a typing speed/accuracy test, whatever that agency wants.
In some countries there is a national exam that you need to do well on to be considered for the majority of non specialized government jobs, proving things like basic math, basic reading comprehension, basic writing ability.
Often these civil service exams are quite difficult and quite competitive, as many more people want government jobs than the government wants to hire people.
(*) It’s more complicated than that, but not in ELI5.
I worked as an exam analyst for my department, my job is to design those exam people take.
To work for a government agency, there are few ways to go about:
1. Get elected, pretty obvious, people vote you into the office i.e. representatives, presidents, judges, etc.
2. Appointed, someone from the top like the governor or president pick someone as their cabinet or head of the department/agency. They may be pull from outside or may be from:
3. Rank and File. This is where the civil service exam comes in. As government entities, all hiring process have to make sure they don’t violate any civil rights and labor laws and attempt to stop managers from favoritism and nepotism or just picking random people off the street agencies create the civil service exam system. This is so that instead of just looking at a resume or in person interview where there are so much bias can occur, things are sorted out by how well you know about the job by given a ranking. Used to be, the exam are long and takes months to set up, even longer to get the results back, but now in this day and age most department just use a training and experience type exam where the candidate answer how many years of experience doing so and so and scored accordingly and candidates get their results back immediately.
The exam itself is not a singular exam: based on the job, each exam will ask specific question related to the job duties, so an exam for accountant will be different than an exam for office clerk.
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