Internal opportunities within the Civil Service

[isitme111]

Hi, I am interested in working for the CS. They seem like a good employer eg flexible working, pension, annual leave and pay don't seem to bad. Can anyone advise what internal progression is like. For example if you started off on an AO grade would it be challenging to get to an EO grade ? Also, I look at the CS job site but do internal employees get considered for roles before they are advertised externally ? Thanks.

It very much varies depending on what kind of job you do and what department, but as a sweeping generalisation I would say it's reasonably easy to progress from AO to EO especially if you have a relatively strong academic background (some departments will still specify a degree or equivalent level of experience for EO+ roles) and in a not too technical role. Obviously that doesn't apply across the board, eg. I used to work in one of the scientific CS departments and the jump from AO to EO and EO to HEO (we had different names for them but equivalent grades) was huge and hard to surmount because AO was the highest 'non qualified' technical support staff grade and EO was the lowest state-registered/degree qualified grade and for HEO you had to achieve a sub-specialist qualification, so aside from the odd new graduate that chose to take a technician job or something basically the AO staff hit a ceiling and couldn't be promoted any further and some EO staff also were unable to progress because they had to wait to get their correct paperwork from the registration body which took ages. But general admin, policy, managerial, corporate staff could whizz up the grades fairly quickly which was a bit of a source of resentment...

Once you are 'in' as a civil servant you will have access to internal vacancies across the whole civil service so you can transfer across departments fairly easily (although again caveat if you live in a tiny rural town that happens to have one single CS office in it of course it's harder although with remote/hybrid working obviously things have gotten easier). Not every single role gets advertised internally first, if they are more specialist or niche it may go external and internal at the same time but a lot of jobs are internal only...

One thing I would highlight is that although starting salaries can look attractive, if you are coming from a private sector background where substantial annual payrises are basically expected, the CS can be a bit of a shock because your starting salary is basically it forever, there is very very limited local discretion to increase salaries and for years the CS had a pay freeze so no uplift at all or only very modest cost of living/inflation upgrades, that isn't necessarily the case now but even so if you are expecting more than a 2- 3% payrise per year the only way to reliably get that is to be promoted, so if you are looking at AO roles now I would recommend looking at some of the person specifications for EO roles and seeing whether you think in a few years you'd have the experience/qualifications/skills to apply for them, if not then you might be looking at effectively the same salary for many years to come which might make it a less good option?

Thanks Maxelly for such an informative reply - very useful. It's the flexible working that attracts me as it can be so very hard to get that in other organizations.

It may differ between departments re: promotion from AO to EO. I have heard that there are far more AO's than there are EO opportunities, and I have known some people take a long time to be successful at promotion. However, there are always people who get promoted quickly through the grades. I think a lot of this is down to being skilled at the application and interview process - it is peculiar to the Civil Service. There is support, training and guidance for those who want to progress.
Existing civil servants can apply for both internal and external vacancies - some jobs will be advertised internally first, but once they go external all applicants are considered equally as far as I know (I have done recruitment panels for external vacancies and no preference was given to internal candidates).

Thank you. It's good to know there are opportunities and yes there's certainly an art to the application and interview process !