Civil service roles - is there any point applying?

[Rispa42]

Hi all, hoping someone who has experience of the civil service can help! I have limited experience with the civil service and don’t know anyone IRL who works there.

Over the last few months, I’ve applied for a number of roles in the civil service that look interesting. All within Policy but across various grades and departments. I have had one interview (that I wasn’t successful in) but all the rest of the applications have sat in the ‘applications received’ pile, with no movement either way. It’s a little frustrating not to get a resolution as I’ve put in quite a lot of effort for each application, taking days for each one. I did get an email for one to say that the sift had been delayed but all the rest have been tumbleweed.

I’ve seen a couple more roles that look interesting but I’m now wondering whether it’s worth spending time on applications etc when the role may not even exist? Not sure whether it’s an election thing or standard civil service, but I have to say I’m getting a bit disillusioned and maybe it’s not for me! I’d rather they just declined the application rather than hanging around in limbo for others.

Would love to hear advice!

Any roles that are out there at the moment have loads of people applying which also delays the results of the sift. My manager has had 30 people speak to him about our vacancy which is unusual.

Things can change quite a lot in CS so job roles can change which could be why some aren't getting back to you. The election won't be helping as well. I would keep applying as you could always get put on a reserve list. I once didn't get an interview and got asked a year later if I wanted an interview for a similar role.

Promotion is slow in the FCDO because there are a lot of people chasing not many jobs at grades which are key to promotion. It's also got much more rigid rules than the other departments - you have to do a home role for 2 years before moving on at the moment (with some exceptions), and most overseas roles are at least 3 years.

It's not necessarily 'who you know' externally but it's an organisation that favours internal networking to some extent. Fast streamers have a different gig though where they move around a lot quite fast, so I would still encourage him to apply. Other departments also have overseas roles as well if that's what interests him.

My dept also has a freeze, I am recruiting for one essential, very niche, post XWH at the moment but it involved a lot of hoop jumping.

I applied for my first CS role recently (at HEO level, with an ALB) and to my slight surprise, got it and am scheduled to be starting in a few weeks.

(However they've not been super forthcoming with info and have told me I won't get my contract until I start - that, combined with this thread, is now making me a little nervous!)

In terms of application and interview prep, I took the behaviours and worked out a fairly detailed example for each one. Then I condensed them into bullets and "revised" them, and also focused on MY role in each action (rather than attributing to team etc) and went into reasonable detail about HOW I did each action. I.was prepared to read the room and tailor my answers (i.e. condense them down even further) if need be though. For the strengths, I wrote down all the ones mapped to the behaviours in my role, it it was about 40 and I was buggered if I was going to provide an example for each 😂 so I just tried to think through them all and thought of synonyms for each - this is helpful for consolidating understanding of what's required, I think. (I also made sure I used lots of the strength words in my CV and covering letter - so "enabled team development by providing training platform etc etc". In my case, I feel like I was well prepared (and had tailored my CV and covering letter to suit), but also I have some reasonably niche experience that was very desirable for the role, and probably wouldn't have been that common locally to the role's base office. Very best of luck, OP.