Working in the Civil Service AIBU

[WellAlwaysHaveParis]

I’ll be starting a new job in the Civil Service soon, and I’d love to find out a bit about what it’s like before I start.

I got the job offer last month and won’t start until a couple of weeks’ time, so I’m now feeling really keen to finally start and get stuck in.

When I went for an interview at the department where I’ll be working, I really liked the culture and feel of the place.

Would love to hear from people on here who work in the Civil Service though, just so I know a bit about what to expect when I start :)

Also, if anyone has any tips about how I can be as effective as possible in the role from the start, that would also be hugely appreciated :) (I’d prefer not to mention the exact department or role on here, but it’s an entry-level
role).

Thanks :)

Prepare yourself for endless protracted meetings about fuck all. My contract at the Department of Health was, thankfully, a very short one.

Have you ever worked in a large office OP? DH is a civil servant and I work for a large non-British private corporation, but we laugh at how similar the daily grind, internal politics, bs office lingo, lack of meetings rooms, crap IT equipment and so on are!

Also the same ideas come in and fashion every few years. For example, SEO and g6 were "dead" grades a few years ago in some departments and are now back in vogue. Also every few years the promotion system moves from boards to "apply for what fits your skills" the back to boards again.

A close friend has worked in the department for Business Enterprise and it's preceding forms for 20 odd years.
She's fairly senior but spends what seems like 80% of her time in meetings ( and meetings about meetings).

She's completely institutionalised, by her own admission. I think this can be the problem with the CS -it's it's own little world that moves at its own pace ( one which has time to have meetings about the colour of the new folders in the department) and her career progression has virtually ground to a standstill while idiot graduates are fast tracked. Although her skills are transferrable, she's lost all idea of what happens in the private sector.

It's years and years ago now but the civil service offered a better career and more variety when there were set pay scales across all departments. It was much easier to move around if you saw a job that interested you. Now you are stuck if you are in a high paying department and want to go to a same grade job in a lower paying one (or happy to mark time for years)

Thanks for your replies, everyone :) going by what many of you have written, it sounds like career progression isn’t great. Would that be fair to say? In many ways, the CS sounds like a great employer though.

One thing I’d definitely be interested in is a career in diplomacy with the Civil Service. It sounds though, from what some of you have mentioned, that it might be tricky to move between departments. Is that right?

Ah I think a fair few posters on this thread are looking back a long way. The CS is a different beast to even 5 years ago.

I think you’ll enjoy it and with your clear ‘can do’ attitude you’ll fit in well.

Fun game for the first few weeks - spot the acronym. Everything in CS has an acronym and you’ll think ‘I’ll never talk like this’ but soon you’ll realise that you are.

And then you’ll truly be One Of Us

Career progression depends on the department. In dfe if you’re good you can go up faster than other departments. In CS v normal to do several posts at one grade before going up to the next. But I’ve seen people come in within the last 12 months for outside and be promoted a grade already. Are you based in London? Might be trickier in the short term there as dfe is only expanding the non-London sites currently.

I'm a civil servant and like it overall. However, I'm one of those 'idiot graduates' who has been fast tracked and will be G7 in a couple of months. I used to be a lawyer and CS is much less stressful and more family-friendly, but also less well paid.

Get ready for lots of filling in forms and tick boxing exercises every time someone higher up who doesn’t actually know your job has a ‘bright idea’. Not to mention the constant changes and evaluations because you forgot to write that the guy had pink underpants whilst discussing legal matters.

Jaded no not me. Only been 14 years. On the plus side the sick leave andcreturenebt packages are ace!

Reading above the it coming back every few years made me laugh. I call it the 3 yearly reinvention of the wheel

Totally disagree about career progression/promotion being difficult. Sweeping generalisation based on my own department, but if you're good and invest a bit of time in preparing applications and for interviews, you'll get promoted. And colleagues/managers will help you do that. Diplomatic service is very competitive, but you have the opportunity to apply for any job that becomes available and compete with everyone else.

Also don't recognise the description of being looked down upon if you work in delivery/ops. Ops knowledge is highly valued where I am, although policy and delivery arms could do with understanding each other better and working together.

My experience of working in Whitehall has been great - really interesting work and fantastic, supportive culture, good work life balance etc. Yes, there's a lot of bureaucracy, but I've found that in private sector orgs as well, and the cuts have been tough - don't know who these people are that have time to meet to discuss folder colours (!) but ultimately it's still a good place to be.

I'm not sure whether you'll be working solely on PQs, probably in a central department's Parliamentary branch co-ordinating other people's draft answers, or working on a policy area where your responsibilities include drafting PQ answers, but either way - be friendly and proactive, ask lots of questions and realise that either way there'll be a lot to learn - including specific procedures and little idiosyncrasies about how the dept works. Your best bet is to spend time building relationships with your new colleagues so you can learn from them.

The role will depend on your particular government department. The one I work for would never let the policy people any were near a pq answer ! They provide the data for the answer to drafted by a separate team. If that kind of role be prepped to need to contact all sorts of people and working to a tight deadline. Most annoying thing. Getting the sign off of the answer!

My DH is also a civil servant, and he loves it! He’s had some awesome opportunities and now has a job in that doesn’t involve a desk or an office and is very flexible!! He seems to be able to take almost as much time off as me (I went back to teaching after my stint in the CS) and is better paid. He is officially an EO grade but has lots of additional responsibilities. He plans to stay in CS until he retires!

@WellAlwaysHaveParis

It is very unlikely to transfer to the FCO - especially for overseas work rather than say policy or a project in London.

You would need to apply to the diplomatic fast-stream or (not sure if they still have this) the "operational officer" grade (broadly EO/HEO but FCO grades are a little different) when they recruit externally. The competition for both of these is fierce - I remember going to an FCO careers session and they had 10s of thousands apply when they advertised for operational level entry. Language skills, especially in "difficult" languages would help.

For those interested in a taste of work overseas, departments which are heavily involved in legislation from Europe offered changes to go to Brussels and/or a secondment to UKREP was a possibility - sadly these opportunities will be over next couple of years.

SIS also offers chance of overseas postings after experince in London and is an interesting area both here and abroad - reasonable pay vs some departments too!

Welcome to the CS OP, your role sounds like a great opening opportunity and whilst I haven't worked for DfE myself I've heard it's one of the friendlier, more progressive departments ...

In terms of what to expect, the beeb sitcom 2012 and the follow-up W1A are scarily accurate about the public sector generally and pretty close to the civil service... lots of jargon and acronyms, endless pointless meetings, strange obsession with hierarchy and grades, minimal chance of a pay rise, ever

On a more serious note I can only speak for myself but I find the CS pretty good on career progression if you are competent, willing to learn and get on with people, you can't expect to be 'given' a promotion without going through an appointment process but that's fair enough really. Austerity might perhaps mean fewer opportunities or lower grades in some areas but the CS is usually good at allowing internal applicants first dibs on vacancies over externals which is good!

I’ve just left the MoD - I hated it! 3 of us doing the same role left within months.

It takes ages to get anything done, the people in my experience were unpleasant, I could go all day without talking to anybody, it was a very strange place to work!

I could literally do nothing, take long lunch breaks etc and nobody ever noticed or commented.

MoD is also VERY disorganised! In so many ways. A complete joke really.

Most important thing for PQs is meeting the deadline. A perfect answer too late to go in Minister's box is useless; a less than perfect answer produced on time has some value. It's really good training for later life, teaches you to evaluate what is possible in the time available and focus on the most important. Works for housework too!

PQs come in "written" and "oral" forms. Oral are when the MP gets up and asks the question in parliament and the minister replies. MP then gets to ask supplementary questions (which don't have to be supplied in advance), so you need to know what is going on in that particular MP's constituency to know what the supplementary might be. Written just get a written reply, no supplementary questions, so are easy to reply to. You have to get agreement to your answer from any team impacted, and make sure that your answer doesn't contradict previous answers given.

You'll see the style if you look through Hansard.

You will probably spend much of your time trying to coax information out of people who don't want to/cba/too busy to provide it. You will quickly find your important deadline is not their important deadline.

In terms of preparation, a decent understanding of how Parliament works (the parliament.uk website is good), watching the last few Education Oral Questions (iPlayer or again on the parliament.uk website) and a decent knowledge of education policy (just the education bit of the BBC news website would be a good start) are all things I would be most impressed by if you turned up in my team! Even better if you know who your MInisterial team is, bonus points if you know any of Ministerial constituencies, name of Opposition spokesman on Education and the name of the Chair of the relevant Select Committee.

Thanks so much @NiceHotBath :) when you mention knowing the Ministerial team, do you mean knowing the names of the people who work for the Minister I’ll be working for?

Familiarise yourself with the language they use and how they talk about what they do by trawling through all the pmqs online and the DfE bits of gov.uk. Have a look at their Facebook site and Twitter account. Get to know their writing style and familiarise yourself with the acronyms they use and stakeholders they deal with.

Best tip for getting on well there? Find someone you get on with in the press office and learn all you can from them.

Differs by department and teams within departments. Expect masses of bureaucracy and meetings and lots of people only slightly senior to you pointing out how much more senior they really are. My initial experience of the CC was at AO grade and it seemed to me and plenty of others that I'd been employed as a face in the office to enable my manager to 'work from home' most days. Other, much more senior, staff appeared to be doing more interesting work yet several still had massive chips on their shoulders.

I joined the CS straight from university and was with them for 26 years. I worked in several different departments including the DofE, doing a number of different jobs. In the D of E there was plenty of opportunity to move around and undertake different roles, whatever your grade. Been out for sometime but can't see it being any different now.

I always found it a very welcoming place with lots of bright people around although some of those in the London HQ often acted in a rather superior manner to those in the regions as they tended to have more direct contact with ministers.

Good luck in your new job.