Anyone here work for the civil service?

[jobquestioncs]

I'm applying for a civil service job, and I'm diagnosed autistic. There's a box asking if I'd like reasonable adjustments. I'm wondering what is and isn't reasonable? Could I ask to see the questions shortly in advance, for example?

I mean the core questions anyway, not any follow up probes.

You can ask for an adjustment where you get additional time per question and that the panel gives you more support in understanding their probing questions and staying on track.

You would get a call in advance asking what adjustments you might need for interview. The questions are standard and based on the behaviours for the application on the website.

If they are setting a task for the interview, you can also ask for more notice and additional guidance for clarification.

Sometimes they’ll purposefully set a short notice task, because they’re under the impression this tests your ability to meet deadlines in the job. That’s a thoroughly dubious assumption and should not be used as an excuse to deny additional clarification or prep time to a neurodiverse candidate.

of course, how shit they are in responding to your reasonable adjustment requests may be a good indication of various things about the culture in that particular corner of the civil service.

A friend of mine in the civil service lost out on her dream job to a much younger candidate going on promotion. She was told that it wasn’t fair to include her years of relevant experience as part of the process, so they just went on the interview, where “the successful candidate demonstrated great enthusiasm for the role.” She’s now been asked to train up the successful candidate. I’d tell them to fuck off but she’s a nicer person than me.

This is part of the problem. They’ve tried to eliminate age-ism by making it impossible for panels to take absolutely relevant things into account.

‘Enthusiasm’ as a measuring stick for choosing a candidate is seriously flawed. And may be discriminatory in various ways. Culturally appropriate understandings of how to show emotion at work can differ - as will how people show enthusiasm. This is also true where there is neurodiversity.

A lot of things about the way the civil service operates - recruitment, the grading of posts rather than people, valuing of quantity rather than quality of types of experience - make it hard for to recruit the right people and have them grow and develop over the course of a career. It becomes a big problem the more specialist an area is. Having people constantly cycle in and out, staying in post for short periods means the only people who stick around are waiting to fill ‘dead people’s shoes’ (because it must be gender neutral even if it’s a metaphor) only to not get promoted because someone who has played the musical posts game better applied too.