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.
In: Other
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.
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