Progression internally within the Civil Service

[isitme111]

Hi, I am looking to apply for Civil Service roles. I have often heard that once you are in there are many opportunities to apply for other roles. I'm wondering what this actually looks like. Are there lots of internal opportunities that don't make it to the external Civil Service Jobs website. Thanks.

Yes when we recruit we can decide to advertise within the organisation, within the department, across the civil service or externally. So naturally there are more roles for those in already, it can be quicker to recruit internally but then if it's a harder area to recruit into the appetite will be to go external.

There can also be TDAs and expressions of interests which are temporary arrangements, can be a good way of "acting up" or trying a different area, but much simpler recruitment process.

If I look at the CSJ site without logging in there are 2745 jobs available, when I log in there are 3091, so not a huge number to be fair. Sometimes the temporary roles aren't done on CSJ though. I know we don't in my org.

In my experience there’s a lot of opportunity for progression in general - particularly if you’re not restricted by location or happy to move departments. I’ve had two promotions in the last 5 years, one for within the same department then another to a department linked to my old one.

Depends entirely on the Gov dept, obviously. In ours it USED to be internal, wider CS then external. Now it's straight to external. It's now really difficult to progress in some roles, slightly easier in others.

Lots of EOIs in my department (one of the largest civil service departments) but they are not permanent promotions to a higher grade. For those you have to apply to the external campaigns, last year there was a big one of EOs and HEOs. The downside- you can be on TDA (ongoing temporary promotion to a higher grade), but if your role is added in to the mix for an external campaign you can lose your role and TDA grade to someone permanent. So you get bumped back down to your previous grade but not necessarily in the same team or area.

Thank you, all this info has been very useful