Can someone explain civil service salary bands to me?

[Lastoftheusernames]

I am considering applying for a job I've seen advertised which closely matches my skills and experience. I have worked in the private sector soley for 20 years which quite probably already puts me at a disadvantage and I'm wondering what my chances could be. I know no one can answer that but before I complete the long application I need to know it's worth doing in the first place.

The main issue is that the role is advertised with a minimum and maximum salary with over £25k difference. If I were offered the role (unlikely, I know) at the lower end, it would be far below my current salary. I would need to be towards the top end for it even to be worth me completing the application.

Why is the salary range advertised so wide? What would differentiate someone for them to gain the top salary? In my industry we don't have pay grades as such and a role could never be advertised with such a wide salary range, at this level anyway.

The lower salary would be the starting rate. It is increased on a yearly basis until you get to the maximum.

OK. Not worth bothering then!

I thought they'd done away with increments and you won't ever move off your starting salary, except small 'cost of living' raises?

Starting salary almost always being the bottom of the range, our organisation almost never pays more, despite having terrible recruitment problems due to low salaries for certain specialists that can earn a lot more elsewhere.

What they are asking for in terms of skills and experience does seem unrealistic for the starting salary.

That's the civil service for you. We're all in it together .

There can be scope to pay more due to extreme recruitment difficulties etc, but that would require approval at near Ministerial level (seriously) and they'd have to not be able to find anyone qualified willing to work for the salary initially offered to even consider upping the pay at all. Eg if the range is £25k to £50k and you say you'll only take the job for £50k, but they have someone else nearly as good who'll do it for £25k, they'll get the job not you.

Thanks Barbara. I have a lot of real work I need to focus on so you have saved me from wasting my time. It's the kind of application I'm not used to completing anyway so it would have taken me ages.

BTW the pension is pretty sh*t these days too...

But "we're all in it together"

The lower salary is the bottom of the salary band. Normally this is the salary for new starters and possibly for those on promotion if they were quite far down the salary band for the grade below. Sometimes Departments have discretion to offer higher starting pay, perhaps if there’s difficulty recruiting certain skills or they get an external candidate with skills they don’t want to pass up. In that case they might offer a salary that’s higher up the band.

I'm surprised at this. I work in local government and its not assumed that new people start at the bottom, it just depends on experience etc. Usually negotiated at point of offer.

Hang on, I don’t agree with quite a bit of the advice you’ve been given. If the salary range is £25k I am guessing it’s a fairly senior position - do you know what grade? The job info should say? And if you have lots of relevant experience but come from the private sector, then it might well be a profession where we have a shortage of qualified civil servants - this is often things like commercial skills or specialist IT skills. In that case, the norms which usually apply to civil service pay (eg you start at the bottom of the pay scale) may not apply. Pay for these kind of external hires is often well above the mimimum salary.

However, it IS the case that for the great majority of civil service positions, you will start at the bottom of the payscale advertised, but even then it is sometimes possible to negotiate a bit of a higher starting salary. Possible arguments might be: you’re not willing to take a massive pay cut and can’t afford to start at the minimum advertised, or you have a particularly relevant qualification or type of experience to the specific job, or you know they have a big skills shortage and you’ve got nothing to lose by negotiating. A recruiting manager might well still decline that request but not always and not inevitably.

It also hugely depends on the department. And in general, at the moment, most departments are being told to keep tight control over their staffing costs, but again you can’t be certain they’d refuse to pay you more than the minimum.

Can you say a little more about the kind of role and grade?

It says Specialist as the grade but it's not IT. Based on what's been said, I don't feel it's that specialised that they would pay £15-20k more than the starting rate.

Although I think I could do the job from everything I've read about it, I haven't got the background in competency-based interviews or even applications that would help me through the process. It would mean starting from scratch as in my current industry it's your CV that gets you an interview and chemistry and a strong presentation that gets you the job.

It's not a dream job; I just thought it sounded potentially interesting.

Hm, ‘specialist’ isn’t a civil service grade but does suggest it might be one of the shortage ‘specialist’ professions (commercial, digital, data, technology) where the normal pay arrangements don’t apply (ie external recruits often get more money than regular civil servants becaus the job market means we couldn’t attract those professionals unless we pay more).

Before ruling out an application completely, I’d really recommend emailing /calling the recruiting manager - there should be a contact details in the job ad - and asking a lot more about the job, including asking about the pay band. If they aren’t expecting largely external applicants, they won’t expect people to be completely au fait with competency based applications, and I’m sure they will tell you if there’s flexibility regarding the pay.

Standard Civil Service grades here

Thanks Widgeon.

*Wigeon

People who are hired externally quite often get paid more than the bottom of the range.

There is a big push to recruit more people with private sector experience particularly in commercial/IT/delivery roles - don't assume no previous CS experience puts you at a disadvantage.