Yet what makes these documents particularly painful to read is that so many are burnished well beyond the truth, often transparently so. This is especially uncomfortable for Australian readers, who are bred to despise tall poppies and arc up at any whiff of big-noting.

Still, it's hard to be objective about ourselves, so big-note we do. Casual work in a mail room morphs into logistics coordination. Updating a spreadsheet? That's database management. An EL1 officer once sat a few metres away from her minister at a meeting - ''demonstrated high-level liaison skills''.

The compulsion to inflate our achievements is not peculiar to the public service. The trouble for federal bureaucrats, however, is twofold. One is their statutory obligation to ''behave honestly and with integrity in the course of APS employment''. The other is that public servants' job applications assume a greater importance than those in other workplaces, because government recruiters must be able to ''prove'' that their employment decisions are merit-based. The paper trail can become crucial evidence in the event of an appeal.

Nonetheless, gilding the lily while on a job hunt appears to be no great crime. I am aware of one SES officer whose resume stated she held a master's degree; when it was revealed she didn't, she was given time off to finish her studies. And while individual agencies do occasionally ping staff for telling whoppers or plagiarising applications, tribunal case law suggests a rebuke or a demotion is a far more common penalty than a sacking.

But what of public servants who pay someone to write an application for them? This is no hypothetical; many APS job candidates are desperate for expert help, and a relatively large number of businesses vie for their money. It's unsurprising: the bureaucracy's Byzantine recruitment rituals force even junior staff to conjure up a couple of thousand words explaining how they ''support strategic direction'', ''communicate with influence'' and so on.

I can suggest one obvious way of demonstrating communication skills: write your own job application.

Nonetheless, as specialist recruitment writer Christine Makella, of the firm To The Letter, points out, government selection criteria can undo even great communicators. She says most of her clients have postgraduate qualifications and many are senior executives. Some are even HR or communications specialists themselves. ''Although they have good writing skills, it's a very specialised type of writing that's needed.''

Makella says there is ''absolutely nothing'' unethical about seeking professional help to write an application, even if one of the document's purposes is to demonstrate communication skills. She always tells clients to ''read through it and tweak it, and feel comfortable that it represents you''.

The reason people struggle with the process, she says, is they're too subjective. ''They're either too boastful, because they're trying to say how good they are, or they're too humble. Rarely do they come in down the middle.''

Makella takes between five to 12 hours to prepare claims against selection criteria. ''They're really arduous. I studied law, and I've spent longer on one selection criterion than I did on all of the reading and writing for a law essay. That's how difficult they can be, but [government agencies] are too lazy to change them.''

And that's where any blame should lie, she says: with the employer. The applicants are the victims. ''The employers want sophisticated writing; they don't want simple English. They're just so used to double Dutch.''

Career coach Ann Villiers wrote the best-seller How to write and talk to selection criteria, but, like Makella, she is no fan of how the bureaucracy uses them. Villiers says generic criteria are mostly useless - ''particularly the one about 'strategic thinking' '' - and understands why applicants turn to experts.

''It's a highly specialised form of writing, which you don't use anywhere else. And in a competitive marketplace, why wouldn't you seek help to present yourself as well as you can?''

Yet Villiers prefers not to accept the occasionally lucrative offers to draft job applications, not least because of her discomfort with the ethics of doing so. She has reviewed candidates' drafts and given advice, but says ''people need to do it themselves''.

''Most selection criteria actually ask applicants to demonstrate their writing skills. I think someone's application needs to speak to their integrity, and who they are," she says.

''Also, I've had people come to me and say 'I've paid someone buckets of money to do this and it still doesn't work'. Smart selection panels should be able to pick them [professional applications]. And it will be exposed in the interview, anyway.''

Nonetheless, the business of recruitment writing appears to be booming, no doubt spurred by a tightening labour market and increased competition for fewer government jobs. But the question of whether it is ethical, or even lawful, for a public servant to pay someone else to write an application appears to have no simple answer.

The Public Service Commission says the issue is complex. ''We expect, for example, that public servants will be honest in the statements that they make in pursuit of promotion,'' its spokeswoman tells the Informant. She also notes that the Public Service Act's recent changes made it clear that not only existing employees but potential new recruits, too, are now obliged to be honest in their applications.

''At the same time, some employees may, for understandable reasons, find it hard to write their own applications and may prefer to seek professional assistance,'' she says.

''In some cases this may be because they don't feel they have sufficient time, for example, or it may be because some employees, out of simple modesty or inexperience in writing such material, find it difficult to talk about their own genuine achievements.''

Yet while there is no blanket ban on staff using businesses - or their friends, for that matter - to help write job applications, employees must still ensure ''that the claims made in those applications are honest and do not misrepresent their experience or abilities,'' the spokeswoman says.

''Equally, they will need to consider whether the use of professional assistance to write an application is likely to create a false impression of their own writing skills. This may be particularly at issue when applying for more senior positions, which place a premium on the ability to write well and present a convincing case.''

Ultimately, the commission says employees must exercise their own judgement, and ask themselves whether their application reflects honestly their claims.

So, with the exception of open plagiarism, it seems the practice of outsourcing one's own job hunt is lawful, and carries almost no risk of official sanction. Yet the ethical dimension remains murky. Disclosing the third party's involvement would be one way of sticking to the moral path, though it would be a brave job candidate who took that route.

Of course, an obvious solution is for government selection panels to break free of their fixation on the Integrated Leadership System, a guide initially developed for senior executives but which now subjects almost every prospective public servant to the regular torment of writing lengthy essays of meaningless tosh. Is it really too much to hope for a recruitment process that asks candidates simple questions that relate directly to the job at hand?

Markus Mannheim edits The Public Sector Informant. psi.editor@canberratimes.com.au