To give up on this job offer

[HotChocolate16]

So I was offered a role in civil service last month mid December. Requested through their portal a discussion with the manager to discuss the offer. Chased this various times over the last month or so to which the recruitment email has responded a few times and said they’ve chased the hiring manager but not heard anything. I’ve still not heard from the manager. Should I give up on this job? It was a big recruitment drive of about 30 positions but still surely it wouldn’t take this long for a call back??

As I said before, my provisional offer has nothing. It literally just says provisional offer - accept reject and discuss offer request option. Which is what the portal says to do BEFORE accepting the offer if you want to discuss part time working. I feel like I’m just repeating myself so much

I think you’ve tried having that discussion, but not had any luck. I’d be tempted to accept and you can always withdraw at any point.

I'm also civil service and I would go back to hr if you have a contact number/name for them, explain what you have said here, and ask if they can check with/chase the recruiting manager for you. It could be that they are off sick and whoever is covering hasn't been informed of your (eminently reasonable) request.

I know what the portal is saying. But we're telling you what happens in practice.

In practice you need to accept the provisional offer to allow security clearance to be done. Then there can be an active discussion.

You can email Hr and the hiring manager saying that as you haven't been able to speak.
Y ou are accepting the provisional offer, on the basis of Pt working, in order to allow security clearance to be processed

And the hiring manager may well be off sick, hence no out of office

I would accept on the portal, the portal is managed by a central team so has nothing to do directly with working patterns. Accept on the portal and don’t give your notice to your current job until you have the formal offer

If it's a bulk recruitment round, there'll be a notional line manager named but you may not be matched into a particular role until much later in the process. You will likely end up working for someone else. Detail like working patterns will be agreed at the formal offer stage with the person you end up reporting to. This should just be a formality if it was advertised as suitable for part time.

You aren't on the hook for anything by accepting the provisional offer. It just gets the ball rolling on your baseline security checks.

Still it is very poor form that nobody has responded properly. There are three lots of people who oversee recruitment rounds (hiring team, department HR and government recruitment service) and I suspect each thinks another is responsible for replying.

My thoughts are how a company treats you whilst trying to recruit you generally tells you how they’ll treat you as an employee

For the civil service, recruitment. Especially big external recruitment drives are run by a central team.

Nothing like the actual experience of working in the system

Cs are notorious for this.... Took us nearly a year to bring someone on contract. In the meantime, because we were so desperate they were being paid as the equivalent of a sub contractor which cost 4 times as much!!

@LIZS

Yes the cs works in a way other employers do not. You may already be deemed to have accepted verbally from your conversation. Accepting will generate a contract etc

This is nonsense. The provisional offer contains no T&Cs or other information at all. You cannot be deemed to have committed to a contract when there are no actual contractual terms to agree to. It's literally an agreement in principle.

I mean they use the word "Accept" as agreement to move to next stage, even if verbally, not that it is a commitment on either side. Ds has recently navigated this process. I"'m still unclear as to which stage op is at, and agree that recruiting for a number of roles simultaneously will mean no specific role may yet be lined up.

I’d persevere if you can bear to. I’m a civil servant and whilst the HR process is an embarrassment my actual team are great and much more organised/competent than my recruitment experience would ever have led me to believe.

I agree that the recruitment process bears no resemblance to actually working for the CS. And I think the leave year might have something to do with it - my Department fees like half the staff are on leave to hit the 28th Feb! Of course it depends which department- but if it's mine then apologies

I'd agree that accepting on the portal is probably your best course of action. Just don't hand your notice in to your current employer.

I applied for the civil service, passed the exams and interviews, told I had a position and officially accepted it... by the time I got my start date 2 years had passed and my circumstances had changed so I couldn't take it.

YANBU the civil service is an absolute joke. But if you really like the job I’d accept and then as soon as you have the opportunity request the part time hours. In the private sector this would probably annoy someone but no one will hold it against you for requesting at the ‘wrong’ stage.

Just to counteract some of the comments, it can run smoothly! I had interview in December, provisional offer couple of weeks later, pre employment checks and dbs only took 3 weeks and then I have been given formal offer and agreed start date in 6 weeks time. So will be about 3 months start to finish.

Oh no. I applied for a position within DWP.
The portal says they're looking at my written application.
I won't hold out much hope that anything will happen soon, then!

But it's not a provisional offer in the way that one traditionally thinks of a provisional offer.

It's a recognition that you passed the interview and now want to be submitted for the security clearance checks.

These can take months and s surprisingly high percentage of people don't pass.

As you are new to the civil service you need to pass the security clearance.

Someone internal applying for a new role, or cross department move, won't need to.

For you, as a new recruit, you need to accept the provisional offer so security checks can be done.

Once you pass those then enter conversation about exact role and PT working

Big external recruitment drives are much slower.

Recruitment for a specific position normally quicker as there is a specific business need

I had this but in 2008!!! They took so long I had several other offers and although I wanted to work for the civil service I couldn't afford to wait. Ridiculous it still takes so long!

How the fuck do the CS operate with this kind of inefficiency? I’d lull myself working somewhere like that.

I’d also accept the offer to job things along. It not really “accepting” in the normal sense given you haven’t yet seen the terms and still have to pass security etc. You can still pull out later with no hard feelings - just don’t give notice at your current job.

When will they do a reference check with my current job though? As I wouldn’t want to accept, then have them request reference checks for me to pull out later on and then my employer will know I was going to leave for another job. It will make it very uncomfortable

It's baseline checks at this stage. So they'll want I.D. and proof of address, right to work in the UK, basic criminal record check. IIRC they'll ask for a couple of personal referees and a previous employer but not necessarily your current one.