Advice needed! Career change NHS to civil service

[Teaandcakeordeath83]

Hi. I'm at the top of band 5 in a pretty niche scientific laboratory department- I get both hands on experience and office work. I supervise and train staff though I don't "manage" them. I've gained my science experience on the job. I was a humanities graduate back in the dawn of time.

There's absolutely no progression in my job whatsoever, my dept won't entertain flexible/part time or job share roles at higher levels and I realise that I've spent a long time (10+) years going absolutely nowhere fast. I need a better paid role (especially if we ever want to be able to consider buying a house before we die) and ideally I'd like progression. The civil service looks like it could offer me all of that. Infuriatingly I turned down a CS job for my current workplace 13 years ago.

I suppose my question is has anyone made the leap from NHS to civil service? How did you find the process. I'm struggling to even get through initial sifts for some roles I'm applying for (under £30k salaries so less than my full time pay now...). Have you found band 5 NHS jobs give you the transferable skills to an equivalent salary in the CS or am I just so institutionalised with my stupid niche job that I'm unemployable?! 🤦🏼‍♀️

Any tips? I'm desperate. I'm not a blithering idiot despite not getting through sifts. I just don't know where to look for help/ advice on the CS and successfully getting in it.

Hello, I've worked in both - I would say the cultures are fairly similar, civil service if anything can be more formal and hierarchical, but it can really vary from place to place. On the pay front do bear in mind the pension scheme in the CS is 'better' in that the employee contributions are lower and employer higher, so the same headline salary results in more take home which might sweeten the deal slightly if you end up looking at a paycut. I would have thought there would be more possibility of progression if you go for more of an administrative/managerial type of role than a scientific one...

Re the applications, yes I would have thought you should have the transferable skills for a lot of EO/HEO roles from what you say although it does depend on the individual role of course and also how you are presenting yourself, the CS does utilise a very particular style of application/competency based questions that although designed for fairness and objectivity (personally) I think can make it hard to really sell your transferrable skills until you get the hang of it - there are quite a lot of old threads on here if you search on CS applications and the best way to approach it?

Thanks @maxelly. I'll have a search for some application threads now. I absolutely loathe the application process of most jobs (probably why I've been trapped in niche hell for years 😂🤦🏼‍♀️). The civil service applications really take the cake though. So much more difficult to get through than NHS jobs.