Dd can't get promoted. Govt job.

[Sadwork]

Not for Facebook use.

Dd is late 20s. She's been working in a govt department for a few years. Has moved up slightly.

She's applied for lots of promotions and had a few interviews. No joy. It's really getting her down. She wants to move from the area she's in but can't afford it. She doesn't live with her dp.
Had anyone experienced this in gov jobs? Does your face have to fit?
She won't want to move back home and tbh commute would be difficult.

Civil Servants can take many years working their way up the grades unless they have come in on a fast track program.

If you think about it obviously not everybody can keep progressing up the grades as the higher the grade, the fewer the posts. So you may have an area of work that consists of (excuse my very out of date grade names!) a Grade 7 (principle as was), 2 SEOs, anything from 2-8 HEOs, maybe some EOs, and a number of AOs, say 10-20 staff. How many of those people will make it to the G7 level, or even the SEO level? This is very dependant on the type of work that area does of course, my DBro is in a policy area and I think SEO is the lowest level there, whereas somewhere like a Job Centre or somewhere that processes applications a G7 could be in charge of up to 100 staff mostly at AO or EO grade.

You say your DD is "management" now, but there's an awful lot of levels of manager plus dependant on the role in some places G7 is the "base" working grade whereas in others it's admin grades. If your DD is in a role where she's at the functional level without any staff she's unlikely to be first choice for promotion into a role where she may manage a team. Equally if she's been mostly concerned with management of staff, she's unlikely to get promotion into a role that concentrates on direct work.

Late 20’s already in management and can’t understand why she isn’t being promoted?

Im going to go with the classic over entitlement by young relatively inexperienced people who think they can be senior without putting in that much time.

She’s bew there a few years thats why. She needs to understand she probably doesn’t have the gained experience through years of work.

Not hard to understand.

She's very young so they might prefer someone more experienced.

Tbf ‘management’ could be an HEO or SEO team leader - OP hasn’t said what grade she is.

If she’s only in her 20s , perhaps she just needs to be patient and build experience more

Can I ask how you know candidates are using AI? I didn't for my application but wondered when I saw it on the job ad.

@Sadwork tell your daughter to look up Jac William's youtube videos. He gives advice on the STAR method/interview techniques for CS.

The first CS job I applied for I got (and I was previously only doing voluntary work but have a degree). I watched a couple of his videos before my interview and think it helped.

If she has a good manager, she should be listening to their advice on how she can develop and demonstrate she's capable of operating at the next grade up.

If she doesn't have a good manager, she should move sideways to work for someone better - lateral moves are generally much easier than promotions and if she's capable people will be keen to recruit her.

While it is always worth polishing your examples and how to deliver them concisely while hitting the elements, it is also phenomenally hard to get a new role in CS right now. Many departments have been on recruitment freezes for ages; mine has also mostly banned internal movement. Any jobs that get advertised are swamped by applications.

Keep applying. The CS is a wonderful career and can offer a lot of stability and support if you can accept the salary limitations.

She's still so young! She's doing well to be in civil service management in her 20s. Maybe she could look at a sideways step that's not necessarily higher up the ladder but has the opportunity for better pay and progression. Try something a bit more specialist. Higher levels of management isn't the only way to progress your career.

Tell her to keep trying. I applied for promotions a few times before finally getting the right one for me. She'll get there. She has time on her hands.

What grade is she? I found it hard to make certain transitions, due to a lack of positions and too much demand in part. I was a G7 for 10 years before securing a G6.

But also I needed to get better at applications and interviews and talking about my work more confidently.

I interview a lot of often find people miss the impact part what they have done, it’s tricky but examples need to be anchored in context (situation and task) using as few meaningful words for this, as well as describing what you’ve done (action) and the value/impact of what you’ve done (result).

Worked in government for years, as well as the wider public sector. Not sure where you’ve been working (not RTFT) but this is certainly not the case in the parts I’ve worked in.

OP, I’d say it’s insanely competitive at the moment in the public sector but conditions are still better than private. And having worked across both, I’d say the process is far fairer in the civil service.

I get hundreds of applications for each vacancy I have, even when marked for internal only. With practice, she’ll get increasingly fluid and polished and at some point, that will pay off for her - just make sure that she has a good stock of examples for different behaviours/experience and she can always ask for the interview questions ahead of time. Plenty of departments allow that as a reasonable adjustment.

We’re all rats in the proverbial barrel of cream. At some point, you’re the last one left and you get to climb higher!

When you say a few years, how long are we talking? As movement up the grades in the civil service can be slow as there are always a lot of candidates (both internal and external) for every position. I've been in civil service for 22 years (I'm 48) and I've only moved up 3 grades (now at grade 5).

I echo the advice to get feedback on the interviews and work on the star techniques to prove her capabilities.

Is it her interview performance letting her down, or is that she is not ready for promotion, or both? What feedback is she getting? If she isn’t getting that many interviews it sounds like it’s her application and interview are lacking, but that could also because her examples are not strong enough and demonstrating the higher grade. Is she looking to move internally? That would be easier. If she’s looking to move depts that is harder. Has she secured higher grade work in her current role so she has good quality examples to talk about? What is her development plan? Her line manager should help there.

The other thing is that the CS across covid had a culture of accelerated promotion as it expanded. Many depts saw this. That is now being reversed but there is a cohort of employees of your daughters age who now expect to be promoted a grade every 18 months ago, which is just not feasible- unless they are really exceptional. She should perhaps also look to embrace moving around a lot at her current grade to gain exposure and experience- frankly that is easier at lower grades too. I ideally like sharp capable candidates who are rounded and for me that means they have had experience in policy, strategy and delivery if possible. It’s got tougher too, not unusual for me in recent recruitments to have over 100 applicants for an externally advertised role, so she needs to be strong, patient and persistent- and to stand out. She can DM me if she wants.

This. ☝Also, there are lots of YouTube videos on how to be successful at interviews. Tell her to watch them, read the book, ask for feedback, get a mentor and do some practice interviews. I've been on many interview panels and the differences in people's approach to questions always amazes me - and also the fact that some candidates are very obviously much better prepared for the interview than others. If she really wants to succeed, she needs to make it her mission to do so. Don't let her get away with developing a chip on her shoulder that the interviews are in some way 'fixed'. There is always a successful candidate in every interview and that person is usually extremely well prepared.

Nope, another one disagreeing with this.

Also not a “face has to fit” type thing, all about doing the interviews properly. In fact, often people get promoted who are not very capable but managed to get ticks in the interview (also, some interview panellists can be a bit shit and bamboozled by bullshit if they’re not very sharp).

These days jobs all have to go external as well, so you have a huge amount of applicants most of the time.

Yeah I know it was a typo. Not sure why you need to post 🥴.

Have one back 🥴.

By all means she should build her network, but this not how government interviews and promitions work. I don’t even know the names of the candidates that we have shortlisted for interview until the previous day.

My advice would be as above - ask for feedback; use it to focus training & development ; brush up on STAR. Also, take every opportunity she can to increase the depth and breadth of her experience - holiday cover, task & finish groups, board secretariat roles, assignments and so on. This is where asking around and making your ambitions known will stand her well. Eg: Three jobs/2 grades ago my manager asked me to cover her at a meeting she couldn’t make, as she knew I had an interest in what they were covering it; from this grew a quarterly meeting of which I was secretary; it’s now a monthly board of which I’m Chair.

For the STAR method, I kept a folder of examples that I would update regularly. It can be hard to remember some of your best examples when you are preparing for an interview, so keeping a folder you can refer to can be helpful.

Does she practice answering questions out loud at home?

And does she critically look through the selection criteria to try and guess what kinds of questions she will get? And prepare answers? I do this and quite often you can hit on the exact question so if you have an answer prepared and ready to go that you have practiced out loud and refined to make sure it covers all the relevant points then this can really help too.

Definitely ask for feedback and also practice practice practice.

AI tends to use the same buzzwords plus I've seen a lot of people say how excited they are to be applying for the job. Which is over egging it a bit. Some people leave in the American spellings, whilst claiming to have attention to detail. And some statements just sound similar to each other in a vague way because they are actually low on detail and AI fills in the gaps by hinting at doing an action.

Lots of good advice on this thread. I probably had a similar experience - a couple of quick promotions and then felt ready but got stuck for ages before getting promoted again. It’s definitely frustrating. (One very wise very senior person once told me “your career is a long time,” which was correct but made me want to wallop him).

One thing I would emphasise is that there is LOADS of help and support available in the CS if you have a bit of gumption. There’s a whole network of free coaches, her dept is bound to have a Women’s Network that would offer specific help, there are training courses specifically for women looking at career planning and transition etc. And really, she could ask pretty much any senior person for a chat and some careers advice and they would be happy to speak to her.

You don’t get things handed on a plate - but I guess it’s a pretty decent self-service buffet…

Seen it happen a lot. It's so difficult to get jobs now, that while in the past I'd have suggested she look elsewhere, now that can be risky (assuming she can't apply without her boss finding out).

I worked in HMCE then HMRC for nearly 30 years before being made redundant. I started as a casual AA then AO then EO then HEO all without having to interview (sift process only, different days then!). As part of my role in HMRC I used to sit on sift panels for jobs (though never actually interviewed anyone).

After redundancy I took a part time job in the local council but found the role fairly dull and wanted to go back to full time work so applied as an AO in DWP. It was a fairly large recruitment in my local city so was confident I would get through. I got through the swift and was invited to interview. I researched the competencies for the role, prepared thoroughly for the interview and thought I did an okay job. I was blindsided to be put on the reserve list! So I must have scraped through, but only just!

Clearly my lack of interview experience must have hindered my application. The recruitment process is so tough in the civil service. You really really need to make sure that you dot all the I’s and cross all the T’s so that you can be marked on the success profiles / compentencies. If it’s not spelled out, in detail, the panel can’t mark you on it.

As it turns out for me, it was a lucky escape, I was so upset to be on the reserve panel that I started to apply for other jobs anyway and landed a great one equivalent to my old HEO salary. On my first day at my new job, I got an email to say I’d been offered a role at the DWP (3 months after I’d been put on the reserve list, guess some of the people that initial got through the interview didn’t work out / turn up).

That helps me understand why it's a useful tool but not to fully use it.

Even at uni I didn't use aids because I was worried about anything that might be construed as plagiarism (which was difficult enough in law when it went through turnitin because there is so much legislation that is word for word!)

If people are using that to write their applications then I'm actually pleased it's spotted, because I spent time on mine to make sure it reflects who I am as a person. I wouldn't be happy if someone got a job before me when they couldn't be bothered writing their own submission!

Yes, totally right. It's good to use AI to help, but not write everything. What I do is write my application (ie if civil service 1250 word statement and CV) and then put them and the sift criteria from the job spec through AI and ask it to assess your application's chances of passing a sift. It then rates your chance and suggests improvements- which you'd write yourself, or re-write it's suggestions in your own words. You can tell if an application sounds authentic.

I’m a lifer in the public service and that has never been the case in any of the departments/bodies I’ve worked for. What sector are you in?