Civil service job advice - help me decode this!

[User748937744]

I read the full thread about "how can I earn £50k pa part time after 15 years out of the workplace."

Someone wrote a really brilliant response saying how frustrating they found it when people say "I earn £X in a creative/consultancy role" but with no details.

Here comes my question... People often advise civil service jobs. I have tried and failed to find entry level civil service jobs locally (or remotely). I'm so confused. I have two degrees but have been a SAHP and now want to go back to work. I thought I'd look at entry level civil service jobs thinking maybe I could progress fast once I'm back into the workforce.

PLEASE can someone tell me what these jobs are and how you actually find them? I have looked and looked and I just don't know what job title I should be looking for. Help? Please and thank you!

Civil service jobs on Gov.uk

Entry level is AO or EO grades. As said above they are advertised on civil service jobs website. But every post gets 100s of applications especially at these lower grades as you get people applying who are starting out in their career and those wishing to change career or coming back after a gap - so the are very competitive.

Well yes. Obviously. But 99% of the jobs are very much not jobs that I can apply for - they are not entry level jobs (my previous career isn't something I know how I can translate into a civil service job!)

What ARE entry level local civil service jobs? I assumed it would be working in a job centre or checking DBS applications or something.

As a graduate, entry level could be AA, AO, EO or HEO grades. If you're not looking for any particular jobs, do not enter any key words but filter for these grades and also enter your home town so it can sort by distance.

In working pattern leave it blank so it shows you all of them but you can do a separate search for home working although I've just looked and there's only 3 jobs at this grade.

I've just done this for all jobs up to 30 miles from Leeds and it brings it down to 95 jobs so not enormous amount to look through to see if anything looks suitable especially as you will be able to hone know on some of the jobs and discount others depending on what your degrees are in.

As an illustration, our graduate trainee programme recruits at HEO grade and with previous experience of management we've had a couple of new recruits jump to G7 in a couple of years even with limited experience in our specialism.

For example, my latest search on the civil service jobs site has given me meteorological jobs and food inspector jobs. I am not qualified for either.

Thank you. There are 16 jobs in my area that come up with that search criteria. Looking now!

Don't assume you're not qualified for entry level.

Our (genuinely very niche and outing ) specialism will take pretty much anyone with a science degree onto our graduate trainee programme and we currently have a range of people from new graduates to older career changers with no direct experience but the right transferable skills. On entry none of them were qualified for the job title but their application and interview demonstrated they could probably get there in a reasonable timescale.

Sadly my degrees are not in science! But thank you for your encouragement anyway.

It's really hard getting back to work. I have to find reasonably flexible work (SEN child) but I'm keen and able. Most of the jobs at the right levels local to me are police/prison work. I don't think I'm prison officer material sadly! I'll keep hunting...

All jobs are not equal either! In my specific area I'm HEO grade but actually have a lot of responsibility and you couldn't do the job at graduate level as the nature of it, is that you need significant work experience before.
HEO starts at about £37k i think....nice if you're 'entry level' eh!

Thank you so much - I'm reading the job descriptions with a bit more understanding now. I'll keep hunting. I think there's an enormous need for back to work support for parents who have been out of the workforce for a while but who still have plenty of work left in them.

Anyone else who has any specific ideas - please do share ;-)

It's a challenging job that requires travel, unsociable hours, further courses and study, meeting lots of different people and talking to them, presenting and unpleasant physical work.

Plus we're competing against law and banking for graduates so even £37k isn't really enough.

What about procurement jobs? There's training you can do to demonstrate commitment and progress. I was looking at ideas a while back and came across some procurement jobs in the NHS.

Also worth bearing in mind that a lot of civil service departments are going through restructuring and redundancies. This is going to reduce the number of jobs advertised externally and increase competition internally.

I would also look at local government jobs both district council and county council

Are you based in the South/ South West OP? If so, you'll likely find there's far fewer Civil Service opportunities within commutable distance. I'm a Civil Servant, and DH and I have been considering a move back towards that area for a while, to be closer to family, but we've shelved the idea now due to lack of CS roles I could move to.

They're in the process of moving lots of roles out of London, but they're all going to large cities and hubs, mostly in the North. It's a shame as it's alienating a lot of talent from whole swathes of the country.

Civil service is amazing and I have been regularly WFH since I joined 7+ years ago as an SEO, and am now a G6 earning over £85,000 (due to specialist allowance).

But as you say civil service is a broad sector. Thing to be mindful of:

1. to get to £50,000+ you’re looking at a well paying SEO department, or G7. The seniority of these roles depends on the department, but generally speaking they are senior. They require either a specialism or well established career in the field you are looking at.
2. I’ve seen a huge reduction in ‘entry level roles’ for my area of the CS I’m not sure if it’s because we are loading more work onto middle managers, or if AI is starting to have an impact, but I literally don’t know of any HEOs (though I’m sure we have some) in my team we don’t go below SEO.
3. Areas that do have more of the entry level roles AO-HEO generally tend to be more operational, and big operational departments tend to be the least flexible ones due to the front line nature of the roles.
4. Even with hybrid working you likely still need to be within commuting distance of a role, especially if entry level and establishing your career (as it’ll likely require more office work) so this can reduce the pool.

So essentially, there can be some fantastic opportunities, it completely changed my life and career, but my advice would be don’t just take anything to get in as you could get stuck in operations, instead I would pick a specialism like HR, IT, commercial, risk management etc, and either find entry roles in that, or retrain in those areas and then try to get in, ideally at a higher level, which is essentially what I did.

Also just to say CS is very behaviour orientated, we are quite open minded to transferable skills. If you wanted to say what your degrees and career used to look like we could advise areas that might be receptive.

I just advertised an entry level role, Legal/Procument/Assurance type role … I had 290 applications

It’s a bit weird how the grades work isn’t it? I’m a G7 in corporate and I currently only manage one person and they’re a fast streamer. I do have an SEO vacancy though.

Not to say I have no responsibility, the output of my work will go before parliament, and I’m a qualified professional, but sometimes the actual stress levels don’t really align!

@SunsetseascapeI spent years as a G6 without any line management responsibility until recently, it was bliss while it lasted 😂

So good when you can get it isn’t it 🤣

@Bjorkdidit would you be willing to PM me your field, please? I’m a science graduate looking for a career change.

My sister works for HMCTS as court admin. Resulting cases, listing hearings and whatnot. That is entry level

Yes, it is strange given that grades should indicate standardisation. Our grade 7 has 3 teams (each with a manager theyre responsible for at SEO level) and then a further 23 staff under them at HEO level.

I just don’t think it’s possible to standardise the CS to that degree, certainly not merely around management. An operational department looks very different to a policy department. Then you have the professions, you can’t pay lawyers, principal architects etc a HEO or SEO salary just because they don’t have large teams underneath them.