A niche article, but very interesting and written from direct experience. A long, long time ago, I was a young Grade 7 then (at gratifying "pace") Grade 6 in the Department of Trade and Industry before leaving for a better paid position abroad.
I don't think competition was so fierce then, but the 50,000 figure now is a bit of an illusion: if the quality of the candidates who made it to the assessment centre was so mediocre, one shudders to think what those who failed earlier were like. Such numbers of applicants are a barrier to a properly considered selection process - you need some pretty crude filters to get the numbers down to manageable proportions. Using a 2:1 as a first filter is a no-brainer - when I was at University, no First was given in my faculty for three years running, and only the top third got 2:1s. Now, a 2:1 is more or less a certificate of attendance. Ideally, Dominic Cummings would be head of the Civil Service Selection Board, with a mission to find public-spirited iconoclasts.
The writer seems untroubled by the pay, but surely that is not realistic? Whatever people say about their motivations, the attrition rate (already a problem in the last century, when I was at the DTI) speaks for itself. An Under-Secretary with a family to support would struggle to pay the subscription and dining costs of say, the Athenaeum, and even a married couple of Grade 7s would find it impossible to buy a family home in the London area. If officials are so under-employed, maybe we need fewer, better paid top civil servants? AI should take care of a lot of the purely paper shuffling roles, leaving headroom for some proper mandarins.
As to what these eager beavers should do, with a change of government, determined to do things (wisely or not) there ought to be plenty to do, and if the Civil Service did not have a mindset of mediocrity, it would be delighted by Brexit, as that gives them the chance to do the really interesting brainy stuff that was formerly reserved to the (much better paid and much better qualified) Eurocrats.
Excellent writing. I particularly enjoyed the description of the Civil Service Behaviours as "the lovechildren of the platitude and the buzzword".
The author mentions being unable to leave the screen despite having no work, due to the need to keep his Teams tick green: there is free software online that will jiggle your mouse onscreen for you automatically. Get out and enjoy the day!
Do not even need free software. ( note a relatively quick way to get dismissed from the CS is downloading unapproved free software). There are settings within teams where you can change the time delay before the green disappears.
If it’s any condolence, almost every detail of this article enjoys an exact analogy with my experience as a graduate at a tech consultancy. There is absolutely no mystery to me now as to why British productivity growth has been so sluggish of late.
A niche article, but very interesting and written from direct experience. A long, long time ago, I was a young Grade 7 then (at gratifying "pace") Grade 6 in the Department of Trade and Industry before leaving for a better paid position abroad.
I don't think competition was so fierce then, but the 50,000 figure now is a bit of an illusion: if the quality of the candidates who made it to the assessment centre was so mediocre, one shudders to think what those who failed earlier were like. Such numbers of applicants are a barrier to a properly considered selection process - you need some pretty crude filters to get the numbers down to manageable proportions. Using a 2:1 as a first filter is a no-brainer - when I was at University, no First was given in my faculty for three years running, and only the top third got 2:1s. Now, a 2:1 is more or less a certificate of attendance. Ideally, Dominic Cummings would be head of the Civil Service Selection Board, with a mission to find public-spirited iconoclasts.
The writer seems untroubled by the pay, but surely that is not realistic? Whatever people say about their motivations, the attrition rate (already a problem in the last century, when I was at the DTI) speaks for itself. An Under-Secretary with a family to support would struggle to pay the subscription and dining costs of say, the Athenaeum, and even a married couple of Grade 7s would find it impossible to buy a family home in the London area. If officials are so under-employed, maybe we need fewer, better paid top civil servants? AI should take care of a lot of the purely paper shuffling roles, leaving headroom for some proper mandarins.
As to what these eager beavers should do, with a change of government, determined to do things (wisely or not) there ought to be plenty to do, and if the Civil Service did not have a mindset of mediocrity, it would be delighted by Brexit, as that gives them the chance to do the really interesting brainy stuff that was formerly reserved to the (much better paid and much better qualified) Eurocrats.
Excellent writing. I particularly enjoyed the description of the Civil Service Behaviours as "the lovechildren of the platitude and the buzzword".
The author mentions being unable to leave the screen despite having no work, due to the need to keep his Teams tick green: there is free software online that will jiggle your mouse onscreen for you automatically. Get out and enjoy the day!
Do not even need free software. ( note a relatively quick way to get dismissed from the CS is downloading unapproved free software). There are settings within teams where you can change the time delay before the green disappears.
If it’s any condolence, almost every detail of this article enjoys an exact analogy with my experience as a graduate at a tech consultancy. There is absolutely no mystery to me now as to why British productivity growth has been so sluggish of late.