Any civil servants on here? Provisional offer help

[Floatyunicorn]

Hi

Shamefully posting for traffic.....

I received a provisional offer from CS (home office) 5 weeks ago and had 7 days to accept, decline or discuss offer.
I need to discuss hours around childcare and to make sure the job is definitely hybrid as advertised as without these I cannot accept the job, and will stay in my current job.
i clicked discuss offer and put my reasons and received an email saying someone would be in touch soon.
4 weeks later i heard nothing so i emailed and received 1 back the next day saying the job is still going ahead theres been a slight delay, followed a few days later by the same email as 5 weeks ago telling me i have a provisional offer and to accept or decline the role. Nobody has been in touch. I havent spoken to a human throughout the whole process.

I dont want to click accept and my current job be contacted for reference before ive even had chance to find out if this role will be right for my circumstances (would make things very awkward), but equally i dont want to leave the offer without accepting or declining as last time it told me i had 7 days to reply or they would assume im not longer interested.

At what stage do you discuss hours etc?
I thought it would be before they did all necessary security checks and i dont want to waste anybodys time.

Any advice?

Thanks

Are there any contact details in the original job advert? Usually it's a line manager/ area lead for the team the vacancy is in.

I'd try contacting them direct rather than go through the outsourced HR function that will be running the recruitment. The line manager may not be aware you're waiting for contact as the recruiter may not be passing on messages.

Also, CS recruitment can be painfully slow.

Thanks for your reply.
Unfortunately there is no contact at all on the vacancy. It is a job taking on 700 from all areas in the country so the only contact given is the recruitment email address, very frustrating.

CS recruitment can be very slow. But every department is different- mine didn’t play out like you’re trying to work it out either, so I didn’t establish the hours before accepting. The provisional offer was before checks; then the sorting-out of hours etc happened while the background checks were going on.

In my case the advert said “full and part time available”. When I accepted the provisional offer I didn’t know what I’d got; it was only when I met my Director a few weeks later and asked whether it would be full or part time he said “whatever you want as long as not less than three days”. (It was a massive step up for me so I was always going to take it but I desperately wanted to spend my Fridays with DS). I agreed my hours with him and then the contract stuff got sorted out at formal offer stage.

I’d say accept the job and they’ll put you in touch with your manager and you can work it out from there. There’s almost certainly no penalty for turning a job down if it doesn’t suit.

Accept the offer and they will then start the process of pre employment checks.( they will only start checks when you submit the pre employment form) before you submit the form You can then ask that the vacancy manager contacts you to discuss any questions you might have.
I do recruitment and very often get asked to cont act candidates once they have agreed to the verbal offer before they progress through vetting.

I recently started working for the HO. I'd definitely accept the offer as like previous posters have said the pre employment checks are VERY slow. It took me 7 months from receiving my provisional offer to starting the job.

Working hours weren't discussed with me until my line manager contacted me to arrange a start date, so around a month before I actually started. I believe pretty much everyone in the department is hybrid working now, with 40% of the week in the office.