Civil Service interview - short notice

[Zebra12]

I recently applied for an EO role in the civil service, I heard back today that I’ve been invited to interview. When I went to book the interview the slots were for today or tomorrow. This was meant to be the week of interviews but the sift was meant to have been a couple of weeks ago so I’d assumed the interview dates would have been postponed also. I got the latest available interview but I’m massively stressed about preparing in such a short amount of time. Is this regular?

No - when I was recruiting we were told we had to give (at least) a weeks notice for interviews, so if the sift was delayed the interviews would need to be too. As far as I was aware that was mandatory not a suggestion.

Ps - well done on being invited for interview though 🙂

That was meant to be heard back yesterday

@Chocoqueen thank you, not feeling overly confident with it

No that’s not ok, it’s supposed to be at least 5 working days’ notice. Probably what they did was to set the interviews then faff about with the sift - not your fault of course and not acceptable. Worth a polite email to HR pointing it out and asking for a later interview date.

UPDATE: so I went ahead with the interview with less than 48hrs notice. I thought it went well and came away thinking I was in with a chance. I got an email from them later that day explaining that it had only come to their attention that some people had been given short notice and they were sorry if I was one of them. Just got news that I passed the interview but have been placed on reserve. Bit annoying as the feedback was I came across confidently but my answers could have been expanded upon. Does anyone know how the reserve list works in practice?

It means they might offer you a job, they might not. Depends on who accepts roles, whether they open up more roles, whether the department likes to recruit to other vacancies from reserve lists.

Which department and was it part of a bulk recruitment where they had lots of roles on offer?

@Doorhandleghost it was DCMS, no there was only one role available

It depends. I was on a reserve list for an EO job and got something out of it after 10 months. Then I was on a reserve list for an HEO and never got anything out it. Then recently I made another HEO reserve list and got a job offer just 1 weeks later.

You can find out where you are on the resrve list by emailing them and then you might get a better idea.

Well done for passing with such short notice! That's really impressive!

@Forgetaboutme thanks! It’s a bit bittersweet still at the moment. When you say email them do you mean recruitment or the interview panel?

My DH is a civil servant and does lots of interviews for candidates. Congratulations for passing!

If they place people on the reserve list, he often makes a note and checks in the months following if they've impressed him, so he can offer them first refusal on jobs. He led a team that had several people on who were from the reserve list, so it's definitely an active part of the process.

If it was a single role I wouldn’t hold out for a reserve list role, keep applying. Personally I don’t like to use reserve lists to fill vacancies so it’s not consistently used across CS.

Yeah email the job people using whatever email was on the application. I hope you get something out it but in the meantime keep using the momentum to apply for other jobs. Once you've done one application it gets easier because the hardest thing is learning the success profiles.