Does anybody work for the Home Office?

[Cheeseboards]

I'm awaiting an answer from my interview with them (which was a month ago, and been told it could be another month!)
But just interested to know if anybody here works/has worked for them and what it was like, workload, staffing, management, salary etc.?
It's an AO role.

I used to.
Loved it. Bloody loved it.
Obviously things may have changed, but we were well looked after. There was a big workload (I was in an offshoot of Immigration) but even though you knew you had hundreds of cases ongoing there was no pressure to complete. Some could be signed off immediately, some took days, weeks, months to close.
Very flexible, very family friendly. At the time I was there you could have up to 2 days Flexi leave a month, and those hours could also be "borrowed". On top of your 25 (as it was) days leave, you could therefore have an extra 24 a year on Flexi.
I don't know what the money is like now, but I was earning then (EO) what I'm earning now as a teacher (which I also love) in a different country.
Management- some good ones, some not so. There were at the time still some old career civil servants whose every sentence was peppered with CS acronyms and seemed like comedy series' characters but by and large they were good.
What is good also is that there's the possibility to move round, horizontally as well as vertically. Lots of people from my dept moved to the prison service or the airports.
Training is good, and ongoing. Annual assessments are (imo) fair but firm.

(I sound like a bloody advert) 😂

Good luck with it all!

I've not worked for the HO but I've worked closely with them. Salaries across the board are pretty low, , but then you should have been told what the setting salary will be as it's fixed and transparent. AO is about 18-20k I think though there may be London weighting.

As for workload and staffing, it totally depends which department you're in. Immigration is pretty miserable these days but in Whitehall there are some very good people doing interesting work, especially on the security side.

Good luck

Thank you!

How did you get on?