Civil service job advice - help me decode this!

If you let us know your field and location we might be able to help with specifics. A lot of EO and HEO jobs about to open up in the east of England.

If you do find something you want to apply for and need help translating the ridiculous job adverts, shout. I think you need to be a civil servant before you can understand most of them!

Do you have experience in your degrees fields? If you've qualified years ago but been a sahp without working in these fields, there are always so many changes and updating of the job.

You could organise to do some voluntary work with a company and have access to training courses, so after a while will be seen as 'properly qualified' and current for roles? Xx

Have you got a Home Office department near you? They use recruitment agencies for temp posts, which often become permanent

I’m a G7 and I have around 130 people under me. Mine is an operational role. I personally love it, never a dull day and i’ve done 25yrs in the civil service.

Our new DG started off as an AO in the dept he is now DG of, that’s the kind of thing that motivates people that you can progress up the ladder if you are keen and capable.

At Home office its AO or EO jobs and they do a big campaign every 6 months or so. You need to do some research into application style etc.

I think there's an enormous need for back to work support for parents who have been out of the workforce for a while but who still have plenty of work left in them

Try the national careers service:
https://www.skillsforcareers.education.gov.uk/pages/common/help-and-advice

Don't know if this is still the case but there used to be an exam for entry at EO level for anyone with A levels upwards. Assuming you got in, you'd learn/be trained on the job

Yes I'm a G6 leading about 20 people, but that's a tiny team compared to what a G6 would be leading in Ops!

Have you looked at the fast stream or some of the apprenticeship schemes Op? They are still recruiting as far as I know. It's also worth noting that very few departments will let you be 100% remote now. Ours has a 60% office mandate and check; my last one was allegedly 60% but didn't really check.

It does always seem weird, but as the other reply said, the pay is for different reasons. Your example sounds like an operations type area, where the lower grades are not expected to be overly skilled or experienced, and the management grades are paid for their seniority of management and the stress of managing numerous people.

In corporate we’re paid for job responsibilities and skills/qualifications. I’m in one of the government professions (one recognised outside of government) and they have to have some kind of pay parity else they’d never get or keep the staff. The issue is the grade structure in and of itself is the same. Perhaps they need a corporate scale and an operational scale!

I just don’t think it’s possible to standardise the CS to that degree, certainly not merely around management. An operational department looks very different to a policy department. Then you have the professions, you can’t pay lawyers, principal architects etc a HEO or SEO salary just because they don’t have large teams underneath them.

Yes, it is strange given that grades should indicate standardisation. Our grade 7 has 3 teams (each with a manager theyre responsible for at SEO level) and then a further 23 staff under them at HEO level.

My sister works for HMCTS as court admin. Resulting cases, listing hearings and whatnot. That is entry level

@Bjorkdidit would you be willing to PM me your field, please? I’m a science graduate looking for a career change.

So good when you can get it isn’t it 🤣

@SunsetseascapeI spent years as a G6 without any line management responsibility until recently, it was bliss while it lasted 😂

It’s a bit weird how the grades work isn’t it? I’m a G7 in corporate and I currently only manage one person and they’re a fast streamer. I do have an SEO vacancy though.

Not to say I have no responsibility, the output of my work will go before parliament, and I’m a qualified professional, but sometimes the actual stress levels don’t really align!

I just advertised an entry level role, Legal/Procument/Assurance type role … I had 290 applications

Also just to say CS is very behaviour orientated, we are quite open minded to transferable skills. If you wanted to say what your degrees and career used to look like we could advise areas that might be receptive.

Civil service is amazing and I have been regularly WFH since I joined 7+ years ago as an SEO, and am now a G6 earning over £85,000 (due to specialist allowance).

But as you say civil service is a broad sector. Thing to be mindful of:

1. to get to £50,000+ you’re looking at a well paying SEO department, or G7. The seniority of these roles depends on the department, but generally speaking they are senior. They require either a specialism or well established career in the field you are looking at.
2. I’ve seen a huge reduction in ‘entry level roles’ for my area of the CS I’m not sure if it’s because we are loading more work onto middle managers, or if AI is starting to have an impact, but I literally don’t know of any HEOs (though I’m sure we have some) in my team we don’t go below SEO.
3. Areas that do have more of the entry level roles AO-HEO generally tend to be more operational, and big operational departments tend to be the least flexible ones due to the front line nature of the roles.
4. Even with hybrid working you likely still need to be within commuting distance of a role, especially if entry level and establishing your career (as it’ll likely require more office work) so this can reduce the pool.

So essentially, there can be some fantastic opportunities, it completely changed my life and career, but my advice would be don’t just take anything to get in as you could get stuck in operations, instead I would pick a specialism like HR, IT, commercial, risk management etc, and either find entry roles in that, or retrain in those areas and then try to get in, ideally at a higher level, which is essentially what I did.

Are you based in the South/ South West OP? If so, you'll likely find there's far fewer Civil Service opportunities within commutable distance. I'm a Civil Servant, and DH and I have been considering a move back towards that area for a while, to be closer to family, but we've shelved the idea now due to lack of CS roles I could move to.

They're in the process of moving lots of roles out of London, but they're all going to large cities and hubs, mostly in the North. It's a shame as it's alienating a lot of talent from whole swathes of the country.

I would also look at local government jobs both district council and county council

Also worth bearing in mind that a lot of civil service departments are going through restructuring and redundancies. This is going to reduce the number of jobs advertised externally and increase competition internally.

What about procurement jobs? There's training you can do to demonstrate commitment and progress. I was looking at ideas a while back and came across some procurement jobs in the NHS.

It's a challenging job that requires travel, unsociable hours, further courses and study, meeting lots of different people and talking to them, presenting and unpleasant physical work.

Plus we're competing against law and banking for graduates so even £37k isn't really enough.