Civil Service

[Asimovsfutureishere2020]

Hi,

I wonder if I could get some advice from people as I would like opinions on CS careers and have seen really valuable advice to other posters on here in the past.

I have been accepted to the CS as Customer Service Consultant with HMRC. Entry level pay as an apprentice. I am a mature woman (late 40s) previously a teacher, then did a masters in STEM. I can use python/quant methods of analysis but not much real experience just thesis based. I have some experience working with Git/web sites/HTML, etc.

So, my tech experience is junior but there is some higher level stuff which I have the aptitude for and understand. I have accepted the CS role at apprenticeship level as I really like going in at the ground level and understanding how things function on frontline/operational level but I am ambitious and want to progress fairly quickly.

In the past, I have tried this strategy (not with CS) and I have become stuck at Ops level as that it were I was identifiable.

I would really appreciate feedback from others on my plans and whether you think they are realistic/achievable/practical. I have also got some personal/family things going on at the moment so it suits me to spend a year/18 months at a level wher I will feel confident and secure in a structured environment (particularly due to current changes in CS).

My reasons for CS are, in short the structured training, environment, career options and pension.

My options for tech: can only do python, not very confident, wages would progress after experience but so could CS.

Any views?

Thanks,

I would contact and find out for definite if it is available to you, regardless of that, I probably wouldn’t waste my time completing it. I would enter as an AO Customer Service Consultant without the apprenticeship and soon as you’re in sign up to internal job notifications and be applying for an EO/HEO post ASAP.

The 5 weeks training I found very interesting, it was all Mathematics, calculating underpayments, overpayments, car benefit, fuel benefit etc albeit quite elementary. After the 5 weeks you spend 2 weeks learning the software to change tax codes and listen in to calls then after that you’re on your own.

No I left to gain a teaching qualification for emigration purposes.

@daisychain1

Yes, that is my concern so I will give myself a timeframe and plan.

Data analysis, AI, visualisation, machine learning are all my thesis field. It is a hot topic atm.

@Whatnext thank you - I don't want to send the wrong message though - applying straight away is surely going to piss people off? Wouldn't other depts then be sceptical of someone who messed HMRC about?

No it’s normal in the Civil Service to be applying for the next grade up as soon as you get your foot in the door. Within 18 months of employment out of a cohort of 15 there were only 3 in the same role. The manager you will be given will be an EO, they will also be applying for almost every HEO job that comes up. It’s a strange place the Civil Service

@WhatNext2020

Sounds like teaching, then !!

How did you get on with the PGCE?

I spent 6 months in my last post before moving on (took an additional 3 months to move due to preemployment checks). My previous post was several years though so I don't look like I'm job hopping. For me it wasn't about grade but about having sufficient challenge.

I wouldn't worry about looking like you're messing people about - it's generally accepted In Whitehall that it's hard to hold on to people at AO/EO and sometimes HEO grades depending on the work they are doing.

@Isleepinahedgefund

If it is acceptable, then it should work well with my plans.

I 'm looking forward to starting

I worked for HMRC for 27 years, the job is very family friendly with flexible, part time & term time working, it has changed beyond all recognition in the 10 years since I finished but promotion still tends to be if your face fits & it isn't what you know but who you know that gets you on. If you are someone who can say yes sir, no sir, you will get o, but if you see faults & try to put your arguments across, you get nowhere. The money isn't bad but your best plan is to gain experience & then move to the private sector once you have enough experience, it is the only way to get more money once you are at the top of your pay scale, otherwise you are lucky to get 1% pay rise a year.

How long generally do the checks take? I accepted the offer on Friday and they said pre employment checks will now start. I am on the DBS register.

It could take up to 12 weeks for them to do the checks before you will get a start date, they aren't the most efficient in getting things done.

I might ask them about this actually so that I can plan a few things.

Pre employment can take a while depending on what checks and how inefficient they are (my current dept is v efficient, last one was shocking and it was a wonder they ever managed to employ anyone!).

There are no pay scales any more, just the annual increase (currently 1-2%) so as a new entrant what you see is what you get - no automatic progression.

You sound massively over qualified for the role you have accepted. I think you will be quite bored. How do you feel about being managed by younger and less experienced colleagues?

You will find that progress in the civil service is slow. You can’t easily get a pay rise and there is a very formal and fair recruitment structure which means no jumping ahead. If you start right at the bottom it could be a long slog.

Your potential to progress and ultimately earn more would be much higher in the tech sector. The CS do not pay well at all, especially when compared to the amount of responsibility you have.

@user148

Hi, I don't have much experience in the tech sector (in this country). My masters is from a European university. I don't know if I am a strong enough candidate for London - also I was a mature student.

Also at a tech company I would go in as a junior developer still - I think.

Is there a reason you didn't go for an analyst role with those qualifications? I'd have thought you could get a G7 or SEO role there. Something to consider once in the door and been security cleared?

hi @jackparlabane

There are a few reasons. My course was online and I didn't think at first it would be robust enough to compare with a UK masters. My thesis (which I still have to defend) was tough and I really gained a lot of ground there. It covers python, textual data, big data, semantic reasoning.

I have joined a few tech organisations and attend conferences in London but I seem to sit in between the people who have been doing this for years and are not up to speed on languages like python or people who are serious coders and do not concern themselves with analysis side. So, data analysis would be ideal but I just don't feel experienced enough. At the moment I am looking at putting some code up on Git , maybe trying out a few projects that I could put online and then I will have something to show.

The course was very broad - it covered digital asset management, tech tools like XML, TEI, HTML5, some R, stats, Interaction design, users and needs. I have also been learning about knowledge graphs, taxonomies, etc. I do like the research elements.

Perhaps it's the culture I am wary off - I am not sure. I am steady, careful and thorough. A lot of tech outside of coding seems very much of the break it first school of thought (although I could be making that bit up!) and the alternative, not so trendy places I imagine are full of people who are quite entrenched in their existing systems.

I also have big surgery coming up in the next year (not sure how to approach that yet) and a very sick parent in another country. I honestly thought that the demands of the private sector in London are not right for me atm.

Please comment if you see any holes in my thinking - I am aware that confidence is a huge factor here.

I am a

I had previously applied for a HEO role and wasn't shortlisted so thought it might be better to go in this route.

A lot of tech outside of coding seems very much of the break it first school of thought (although I could be making that bit up!) and the alternative, not so trendy places I imagine are full of people who are quite entrenched in their existing systems.

You have to remember that public sector in technology terms is like stepping back to the 1980's. It was a massive shock to me coming into PS from industry (blue chip) how antiquated the IT systems and processes I was being expected to work with actually were. But in some respects there are great pockets of excellence and talent in the analytics space - having talented data analysts often becomes a substitute for crap base IT systems, because you can suck out the data into a data lake and do some decent stuff with cloud-based analytics packages. Caveat is that data quality isn't always great (garbage in, garbage out etc)!

Keep the faith, get your feet under the desk and look for new openings and possibilities once you're there. They're used to losing a few AO/EO roles to promotions, there's a lot of attrition and churn in CS.

Also, network like mad, it's not what you know, it's who you know a lot of the time

You sound madly overqualified for this role if you have a masters in machine learning and you know Python. Honestly this sounds like a confidence problem?

I really urge you to go to a tech recruiter or two - maybe try Hired and Power to Fly - and see what they can offer you before you undersell yourself in this way. I am much less qualified than you and am offered senior roles in tech every week.

@daisychain1

That's what I expected. I worked for a tech start up that had ancient servers in its Ops dept - the backend stuff was tortuous. I am used to that set up and quite like having to take a different approach where as I just can't see where I would fit in atm in PS. Part of my course was also quite academically focused (TEI).

@Lojoh I only really know NLP in python

Honestly if you take a junior dev role after your surgery you can vault into a mid-level within six months and be paid more than any developer in the CS by Christmas. They send round ads to us now again and they top out at something like 37k .

NOW you only know NLP. A few months in the mix as an active contributor and you'll be away.

Nobody expects you to know anything when you start. It's quite quite normal for devs to not know what the hell they are doing. You look it up! Everything will be different next year anyway. Nobody knows what they are doing. (They are all just little boys putting on a big show.)

Ha! I'm very glad you said that - part of the boy's culture does wear me down (and that's just using StackOverflow!)

I didn't realise you could progress so quickly junior - to mid in 6 months. What salary would you place mid at?