Civil Service Fast Stream

[Jakolantern]

Has anyone got any experience or advice about applying for this? My son has just graduated from a prestigious university and is going back to do a masters next year. He is planning to apply to the civil service fast stream in October and is very motivated and excited by this prospect. He is highly intelligent, with excellent grades and good work experience and is a hardworking, very likeable young man who is committed to the idea of using his life to provide public service. He is not motivated by money, he just wants to be of benefit of others, but he does need to earn enough money to live obviously. I know he would be an asset to the civil service but as a white, middle class man with a humanities degree I feel as though the odds are stacked against him before he even applies. I haven’t mentioned this to him, of course, and I am just a passive spectator to his life now really, but if there was any help or advice I could give him it would be much appreciated.

As well as the fast stream don't forget to look at Other Government Departments/Arms Length Bodies who may run their own graduate or apprentice schemes.

I've been in the civil service a decade - the vast majority of my colleagues are white middle class men, then white middle class women.

I got in on a temp contract then made permanent

All the interviews are STAR and are name blind I am sure your special little boy will be fine, if he is good enough.

Just be happy they’re not povvos cluttering it up with Lidl non organic full fat milk and Aldi white sliced bread.

This made me laugh. My teenage son often meets his friends for a matcha green tea at a cafe in town! It cracks me up as I was downing pints at his age. I'm about as 'working class' as you can get & got very lucky around 18 year's ago when my employer (local council) paid for my Social Work degree & I would 2nd what over people have written about how Social Work is definitely a way to give back (it takes a lot from you too but that's another story). I'm happy the civil service are trying to 'level up' or whatever you call it.

Yes but when you look at the stats for the higher grades in the CS, you'll see that white men are disproportionately higher.

There are a lot of women and ethnic minorities in lower grade jobs in the civil service but it gets a lot whiter and a more male the higher up you go.

I don't have the stats to hand but I worked for the Treasury which is particularly white and male (and young) and they published stats on it each year.

DDs advice would be to practise the initial tests (not just the examples on website as real ones get much harder as you progress) particularly any weaker areas. Unis often have banks of resources for practise. Prepare for assessment centres and final selection boards really thoroughly especially if there is a subject knowledge test (it will contain questions you haven't seen from 1st year).

Yes I agree. I’ve worked at Home Office, Foreign Office and what used to be Ministry of Justice and found exactly the same.
It depends on the level of application and candidate I suppose.

Did your DS go to private school and a Russell Group uni?

My husband got in the accounting FS, he is white, middle class with three Oxbridge degrees.

I would say almost the entire process was online. Tests online. Then he had to do video interviews where he basically answered written questions to a blank screen, not to a real person or panel. This was back in 2016 or 2017, I don't know if it's still like that.

You copy and paste in the job description and person spec using a white font - AI finds all the keywords and passes the application to next stage rejecting the hard working honest person who could be the best person for job.

Yeah must admit the lazy journo got me. I answered in good grace. Silly me!!

You think white middle class males are disadvantaged in life? Maybe take a look at the world around you, instead of reading nonsense online.

What utter nonsense. Equalising the playing field does mean the odds will be stacked against other groups. They may just have to start working as hard as underrepresented groups already do to get their foot in the door.

The problem with all of this is how do you define "working class"? Someone who lives in a non-affluent postcode? Someone whose parents didn't go to university?

But then if my plumber dad makes lots of money and sends me to private school, am I still working class? Probably not, because they'll screen out private schools. But if we live in a "naice" postcode, what then?

I think it's a silly idea. Outreach is a good idea, go into areas where you don't historically get lots of applications and do presentations to the kids there to get then to apply. But don't tell anyone else that they can't apply. This is only for internships but I know of other organisations that won't let anyone who's not from a "socially mobile" background apply at all, and I don't think that's fair.

There seems to be a move towards making people downwardly mobile.

It may be hard for the MN psyche but to get to higher levels in most careers you have to have the experience etc.
A person who takes off a years maternity leave (twice) and works part time isn't going to climb that greasy pole as quick as someone who doesn't.
The resident doctor training contract specifies this so anyone (male or female) working less than full hours will have to take longer to complete specialty training plus has to complete all of their skills assessments

They won't be able to get their foot in the door at all if they are excluded from internships and recruitment processes.

It's not equalising the playing field, it's just stacking it against a different group of people.

As I've said above outreach is the way forward - get into schools and colleges in poorer areas and tell the kids to apply. But don't tell the kids in the better off areas that they can't apply at all.

Quite. It really is high school politics from Labour. They are imbecilic.

The BBC article says it what your parents did at age 14 so I guess if your parents were 'trades' you would pass, toolmaker comes to mind.

Ursula von der Leyen managed it. Seven lots of maternity leave and a promotion after each one. But yes, for most of us that doesn’t happen!

It’s not equalising the playing field. The rich privately educated are unaffected and keep their privileges,huge advantages and over representation. The squeezed middle however whose kids are already contending with lower loans on tight incomes, no contextual offers, increasingly over stretched parents juggling everything to keep a roof over heads with zero help are pushed further down. It’s just shuffling places and the rhetoric is very much the squeezed middle doesn’t matter.

Why can’t equalising the playing field ever mean actually targeting the top which is the sector that is over represented?

Oh yeah, tell poor kids to apply without providing them with the social, cultural and financial capital that rich kids have and call it “equal”. What utter nonsense.

FrenchandSaunders · Today 08:48
My CS department is full of young white poshos, cluttering up the communal fridges with their oat milk and quinoa

OMG! Poshos in the workplace! Maybe knock up a meccano guillotine and leave it next to the oat milk (or Lego? Do Lego make guillotine kits?).

There are different routes to getting into the civil service. My nephew proceeded through several interviews on FS but was rejected at the final stage. He is not white, so you see it's not the white people who gets rejected only as you imply. Anyways, he then applied to the Government Economics Service scheme and got a job. The security clearance took five months.

Poor ickle middle class white male with a degree/masters.

Tbh even if he doesnt get on the fast track, if he is as motivated, as intelligent as you claim and flexible he'll be able to go up the grades quite quickly anyway.

@Annoyeddd civil service doesn't work like that - I was promoted on mat leave twice, I had two 16 month mat leaves about 6 months apart, and my kids are still little.
Turn over is high there is lots of opportunity to move up internally, especially with external recruitment freezes.