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.

@Xyloplane Why didn’t your school give you info after the day? They were at fault. I’ve a very bright dsis and she wouldn’t consider applying to Oxbridge because she preferred her bubble. Her dc too. My DD did apply but we want to break out of our backgrounds. Attitudes matter and ambition matters but there’s a variety of ways to get the PhD.

Why do people think what parents did at 14 means dc have a regional accent? Why would accents be more represented? Most recruiters at the highest level do want to have a conversation with applicants but it’s not accent that matters. It’s what is said.

Of course, blame the comp, not the “outreach” team at the multi-billion pound organisation that has a wealth of influence, information and money at its fingertips. God this bootlicking is so tiring.

Very blunt instrument but would work, along with screening out anyone who went to a private school.

@dynamiccactus if the recruitment is blind, how will the admissions know where the applicant went to school?
Also, what if the applicant lies? Does the CS check up on applicants’ schooling?

The hassle is created by legislation, its more onerous for a tradesman to take on an apprentice than in the past, and colleges require lecturers in the trades to undertake teaching qualifications, which in the past they did not. gone are the days of Joe the electrician teaching new recruits at the tech on Thursdays.

Agree with all this, also if he wants to work in the civil service the fast stream is just one option. He might also want to apply for Executive Officer or Higher Executive Officer roles on the civil service jobs website, that way he has more control of what role he gets and people can still get promoted very fast that way!

I’m surprised about that.
dc1 did the internship last year as told it bear no relation with the fast tracked application.
He did have his boss in London (dc was in the North of England) say that hed help him put applications together etc… but that’s it.

Exactly, such nonsense.

Try googling “accents and social mobility” and it might just give you a clue.

Is that how you and Labour see it working? What is being used to assess the job and accent exactly

@Xyloplane But it won’t be just the accent though will it? It’s impossible to know other than a gut feeling. It could be dc don’t get the jobs because they don’t apply! Civil Service fast stream is around 950 jobs. As I said earlier around 8000 applicants have had fsm. So the least advantaged appear to apply but only 1.6% of fsm applicants are successful but we don’t know why. It’s 2.7% for non fsm. Of course fsm people might have uber bright parents doing very low level work through choice. We don’t know.

Also half of applicants are not university leavers. They are older so they have experience and a degree.

You tell me, you’re the one doing the gatekeeping.

Really. I’m hiring in the CS now, that’s new. If you’re up for Labour’s plan how will it work exactly?

How do they assess jobs and accents?

I saw this. Quite frankly it’s discrimination and needs a legal challenge!

im pretty disgusted by it , as i am for any quotas, positive discrimination and DEI hires!

OP, you have a white, middle class son: the odds are ever in his favour.

Thank you. Discussing politics is one of his top favourite pastimes, so that sounds hopeful, and he did say something about having signed up to stories from the Economist recently - although I don’t think he has a subscription - so I will talk to him about that.

Which is, of course, the point of the OP’s post.

It does make me laugh when people start to lament how “difficult” things may be for white middle class men.

@Jakolantern, don’t you worry, he’ll be able to be a do gooder, helping out those poor people if that’s what he really wants. How about he volunteers at a food bank in his spare time. Maybe then he will get some insight into how hard it is to not be a white middle class man and actually be the kind of person the Civil Service is trying to recruit.

How did he find it, generally speaking?

Do you or have you ever worked? If yes, and assuming you’re a woman then chances are you will have actively benefited from DEI programmes. Are you planning on giving up your job, pension, home, savings because they will have been acquired as a result of “discrimination”? Or is it okay when DEI principles work for you?

I read on the BBC this morning that all civil service internships were to go to working class applicants in future, and I accept this will help make things more fair, but it does suggest that middle class applicants will be at a disadvantage.

Yes it does. 59% of civil servants are privately educated. Those in the middle who are struggling more and more and not in receipts of any help what so ever, lower student loans, no private education or contacts , with parents struggling to juggle jobs and increasing bills are just excluded.

Thanks. Yes I saw that article and I think it prompted my post. He’s not applying for an internship but for the actual fast stream, so he’s not completely out the game before he starts, thankfully. I also recently learnt that more than 50 per cent of the next fast stream will be students of STEM subjects, which my son is not, so I guess just concerned that the odds are beginning to be stacked against him.

That stat does not reflect my team in the CS at all. I only know of one privately educated CS in my dept. The remainder are of all different class. But predominantly working class. Including new entrants. The CS has offices all over the Uk.

Last year, they had some outreach towards northern universities. The idea was that they wanted to recruit people from ‘the North’ to compensate for all the ‘Southerners’.
Theyre basically tryimg to rebalance things. Not just people from the south (because that’s where a lot of the civil service was). Not just the ‘nice’ MC.

It doesn’t mean white MC men will never have a job in the civil service.

If he has done an internship, he’ll already have a good idea of what to do.
He will have look at other entries than the fast track. He’ll have heard about what they see as important. He will have had contact with different managers that can support his application.
Basically he’ll know more than you ever will.

The masters runs from September 25 to July 26. Applications open in October 25 and they are at least partially aimed at final year students so I guess the fast stream begins in September 26, but I don’t actually know that for sure.