To leave a senior civil service job for a senior role in consultancy?

[Nonotmeagain]

I’m a senior civil servant and although I have a full on job that means long hours, I value the flexibility as I have a young daughter.

I’ve been offered a senior position in a consultancy firm. It pays 1.5 times my current pay. I am really worried that I will not have the flexibility I have in my current job in the civil service.

I want a change but would I be unreasonable to choose more money over flexibility and possibly impact on how I make time to spend with my daughter?

I would go for it. As people have pointed out the Civil Service has reinstatement within 5 years if you leave (check this applies in your Dept).

I trained in the private sector, did 10 years there, 10 years in HMRC at G7 & G6 and went back to the private sector 3 years ago.

I would say there are advantages and disadvantages of each. I'm not Big4, true, but a big firm & have a lot of flexibility - that's really been changed by the pandemic. Understand what is required but if you are the subject matter expert in a public sector consulting team then you may find you're not having to do huge amounts of sales except to people you are already doing work for & your existing network. There are only so many big public sector clients who can pay Big4 rates after all.

Dh was a director at one of the big four - moved to CS and then back to consultancy. Pension is good enough to have hit the lifetime limit before 50. Things have changed enormously since the pandemic - he used to be away from home 2-3 nights a week. That no longer happens, except for client board meetings, they are happy to see him once a week. I would say it's also more flexible compared to before but couldn't compare it to the CS as back then the CS wasn't flexible either. They talk about being flexible a lot but deadlines still need to be met. Dh self-limits to 60 hours a week, often works weekends, works when we are on holiday. He is constantly working on his network - meets with clients/ex-colleagues one night a week. Women struggle with this aspect (not all of course) - but no one will tell you this openly, inviting a client or ex-colleague out for drinks as a woman can still stir up unpleasant gossip.

Can you take a sabbatical to do it? Someone I know has just managed to negotiate a 2 year sabbatical to go out to the private sector.

Never worked in CS but I have worked as a director in big 4 and agree with everything others have said about it. Apart from the person who said they did 12-16 hour days, really - I never did that.
I’m still in consulting but at a different much smaller firm - I would never go back to big 4 but if you have the option to try it / sabbatical / be re hired into CS it might be worth a 2 year trial for example.

You are getting great advice.

Is your daughter an only child?
What is she like in her personality?
Are you very close?

Secondary school is a big jump.
Whom will be at home for her after school?
How would that work?
Has she a great friend network going to Secondary school with her?

You have 5/6 years to see her through this stage.

You could be very lucky and she has a seemless experience, but what if she doesn't?

I have loved being there for my Secondary school children, being able to collect, be at home for the afternoon chat, gossip, and support.

I would be very hesitant to change from that when you have it working so well.

I think in many ways teens need you even more for emotional support and a bouncing board than when young.

I can't imagine anything worse that you trying to settle into a high pressured new job and your daughter needing your support as she finds her way in Secondary school.

My girls have been blessed with great friends and have loved it, but some of the drama, bitchiness and low level exclusion that goes on makes me know that some girls in their year are most certainly not having a great time.

A lot of it is luck.

How do you think your daughter will cope if you are under huge pressure elsewhere and how would that knowledge affect you?

It is important to think of how you will feel with a lot of extra professional pressure combined with helping your daughter through this transitional period.

Wishing you the best.

I recently moved from public sector to a Big 4 but at a more junior level. I didn’t want to go straight into selling.
From what I know, there are big differences between the firms. Mine allows me extra annual leave as a benefit, so I have more leave now than in the public sector. No one I know in public sector has to be away from home for more than the occasional night or two. All the organisations we work with are hybrid or wholly online.
I chose to try consulting after a stint overseas and a move back left me looking for a job, and I couldn’t even get a CS interview. As an external candidate I also found the jobs on offer pretty uninspiring. Consulting was flatteringly pleased to have me! But the onboarding and induction for experienced hires is really poor and I’ve found the culture change very hard. Pluses are none of the inertia and poor performance I was very used to seeing (in some colleagues - I had many great ones). I have only come across a very small number of planks so far.
The company I work for does make a lot of noise about family friendly working but I can see that at Director level that isn’t wholly delivered. Most Directors are ten years younger than me, and a lot have small kids. There are flexible working options in place, and I’ve just had mine agreed. The default is that everyone works from home but in practice they are looking for office presence at Director level 3 or so days a week. This has wrong footed me as I can’t easily do that at the moment (because I live too far from an office to do this easily) and I suspect means after 2/3 years I’ll be looking elsewhere.
The salary is not high enough at my junior level to offset my pension loss but it’s higher at the point of receipt. Like a PP suggested, for now it’s helpful to have the income to save and spend, as I am lucky enough to be the second wage earner, and I have 20 years of public sector pension already. I imagine the higher salary at senior levels means you can get a very good pension accrued. Certainly the friends I have who went into consulting in their 20s expect to retire or substantially reduce work by the time they are 60.
Very happy to name names of the firms I have heard good and bad about via PM!

I realise I should have said ‘no one I know in public sector consulting has to be away from home…’.

I was thinking this... 1.5 times your Civil Service salary is likely cheap for a Big 4 firm.

Are there any benchmarking tools available online for the particular company/grade you'd be working at. I suspect they've made a cheeky offer in the hope you'll accept it, but in reality they'd pay much, much more.

In OP's family position, I wouldn't move for 1.5x salary, especially if they're financially comfortable currently.

The opportunity will present itself again in the future, I'm sure.

I was tempted to move from SCS into consultancy some years ago but I concluded the pension would not be as good (no index linking) and the demands would be higher for the increased salary. One consultant said 'its a young person's job' which implied the need for youthful stamina and flexibility. I stayed in SCS and retired slightly early. Good decision.

In my opinion you are being offered this job because the labour market is so tight at the moment. Civil service hires are risky for consultancies because of the difference of culture and your lack of commercial awareness. If the labour market loosens up in the future - the opportunity will not repeat itself. So if you want to try consultancy grab the opportunity now - the civil service will always take you back.

I work in the civil service in a different country and we are allowed up to 8 years "break" and then can still come back - not guaranteed the same post but one at a similar level. You have to declare where you will work but in reality there is very little that would constitute a conflict of interest.

I'm not CS, I'm LG, but I did make the move and totally agree with this. They do want their pound of flesh. I did it for nearly 3 years and it made me very stressed to the point where I was ill.

I'm back in LG now, and whilst it's sometimes frustrating, it's a better fit for me.

OP I recently had a very similar decision to make - leave a very relaxed, flexible job working with very nice people (in private sector though) for a job that paid 1.5 times the salary but was more hours, more pressure, more stress. I really wanted the extra money (we have a lot of big costs coming up) but wasn’t sure I could handle the hours and stress with a toddler (and we want a second DC).

in the end I didn’t make the move and went for something halfway. 20% more money, slightly longer hours but same flexibility. There are times when I wish we had the extra money but there are also times (like when DC is ill or we have other family stresses where I think thank god I have the flexibility and lack of client demands.

I think it’s a very personal choice and you should really try to listen to what your gut is telling you.

This is a great thread. It’s made me think 2 things:

• That maybe we need a “big 4 directors and partners support thread”. Apparently there are quite a few of us on here.
• That I think I might really like to move to CS if I could get a role at 70% of my current salary! But I would have no idea how to go about doing that (despite routinely getting headhunted for other roles)

H is a director at a Big 4. Pay is excellent, as are benefits, but your pension will beat theirs, as others have said. His hours are absolutely abysmal, works every weekend and lost 20 days annual leave last year as no time to take it, but I don't think that's the norm. The problem is there's no where to go after director but partner, so I'd think about how you want your career to pan out really.

I would emphasise that the hours can be very variable dependent on your specialism. Tax vs management consulting vs audit... they're all very different in terms of working pattern.

Even within a specialism (e.g. corporate tax), there will be major difference in working pattern between the M&A tax team and the R&D tax team, for example.

CS recruitment is a series of very specific hoops to jump through. Many good people already there fail to get promotion because it’s such a Byzantine and opaque process, and it’s even harder from
outside. However, there are coaches used by SCS to polish their application statements and CVs, and help them practice the very particular interview style. You need to find one of these, probably by word of mouth.

Thanks @GreenAllOver that’s really helpful.

I wonder why they make it so hard though! With all of private sector falling over themselves to restructure recruitment to get the best talent, public sector do the opposite.

I had actually forgotten that I started off in CS as an EO (no idea what grade that would be) over 25 years ago.

Also look at - if you were to work with the consultancy for 6 - 12 months and then decide the grass wasn't greener. Could you reenter CS? Same level? Higher? Pension/contract impacts?

Even as someone who has worked for a long time in the public sector, I found I wasn't hitting the right notes with my CS applications. There are definitely tricks to it, and I've lost the knack - the frameworks change and you lose the right buzzwords. I would have conversations with the hiring managers who were keenly encouraging me to apply for the role at the end, and then not even getting interviews. I was really surprised by how light touch the consultancy application felt in contrast.

I think there are a few reasons (could probably be its own thread):

• there is a real desire to avoid unconscious bias so a lot of effort to try and make it about what you have done/experienced personally (unfortunately this has tended just to make it equally hard for everyone)

• everything is advertised for "fair and open competition" but in practice often someone is already anointed/in the role on temporary promotion so half the roles (especially SCS) aren't real roles - in the private sector, you can more easily just be handed a promotion

• it is its own little world with own language and norms generally, TBF this is equally true of management consultancy...

• warring factions in charge of processes - Ministers, trade unions, HR professionals, senior civil servant generalists - so a random compromise is reached

• also, I think it's genuinely the case that it's hard to do an SCS role if you come in from outside, there are all sorts of processes and things that aren't easy to pick up. There's an attitude that anyone can do a civil service role but it's not as easy as people think

I’m grade 6 CS and already feel like I’m working myself to the bone to mix this with being a single mum (14 and 9 yos), so dread to think what consultancy is like.

Definitely wouldn’t want to go for SCS myself til the youngest is well established in secondary so hats off to you for that.

This is true polishing your CV is a job requiring expertise.

Leaving CS temporarily you can make yourself more attractive re-entering and at a higher grade/pay

Love it. And your second bullet makes me think I should stay and move about in the CS.

I will ask about the return to CS policy.

Does anyone have any resource I can use to work out what is a reasonable compensation rather than the blunt 1.5x my salary, which would only take me just a pice £150k?

Well generally CS is contributing around 30% of salary to pension (in addition to your 5%)

www.civilservicepensionscheme.org.uk/employers/employers-responsibilities/employer-contribution-rates/

Compared to around 5% in Big 4. So that on £100k would be c.£25k more. As your tax burden is high at £150k, so you are taxed at more than 50% on the extra 50k at Big 4, you would likely be worse off if you take into account that you currently are on around £100k + £25k. Very approximate, but there we go.

Only reason to switch is for progression, different work options or maybe bonus, as your package is very good and very stable.