UK government on the lookout for bargain-priced CTO

The UK government is on the hunt for a new CTO after incumbent David Knott announced his departure, citing family reasons. The role is advertised with a starting salary of between £100,000 and £162,500, although the online post makes clear that anyone coming from outside the civil service "will be expected to start at the …

[rafff]

Salary bands

10-15 years ago I was getting that sort of money as a contract programmer. And no responsibilities, and no politics.

Am I going to get out of bed for this? Guess ...

[elsergiovolador]

Opportunity

Perfect opportunity for hostile state or big corporation to insert a plant.

No sensible person at required level would work for such pittance.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Opportunity

But that's true of many civil service roles.

[elsergiovolador]

Re: Opportunity

That's why nothing works and usual suspects get minted.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Opportunity

"That's why nothing works"

Speaking as a civil servant, the reasons for things not working are quite simply incompetence on the part of some civil service senior leaders, and especially on the part of politicians who make the actual decisions and should sort out the erratic standard of senior civil servant. The endless churn of ministers means that if through pure luck somebody of competence is appointed, they'll be moved on or on the back benches in 12-18 months. It doesn't help that our system of government means that:

1) FPTP voting disenfranchises huge numbers of voters

2) Too few people are involved in politics nationally or locally, and total party memberships represent about 2% of the adult population

3) Parties are not very democratic anyway, so don't listen to their own members...and

4) appoint as their parliamentary leader somebody on the sole criteria of giving speeches that make the party members feel warm inside

5) the PM then appoints as ministers his chums, without any regard for knowledge, expertise or competence.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Opportunity

Don't forget civil servants going along with the charade, because me golden pension and unsackability.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Opportunity

Yes it is not easy to sack anyone in the public sector, but tbh very few people are caught doing things that count as gross misconduct. Low level incompetence is difficult to sack in any industry, it's justin the public sector the bulk of impactful incompetence sits at the very top with elected members and their chums who really are unsackable.

And give the Golden Pension Daily Mail wail a rest, golden pensions went 25yr ago except for execs.Public sector pensions might be better in percentage terms than private firms but the wages are so shit it doesn't make up for it.

As for this role it's not paying more than a senior consultant/director job in a tech firm. Plus the tax regime in the UK is particularly awful just at that point (approx 62% marginal tax between 100-125k)

[Anonymous John]

Re: Opportunity

Gold-plated is the usual description. Even though gold-plating isn't particularly valuable.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Opportunity Knocks ... and if you have any sense ... run & run & run ... far far away !!!

At the end of the day the Civil Service is there, while the political 'leaders' are changed at regular intervals AKA Elections.

The Civil Service SHOULD have the expertise and is there to ASSIST the new Govt do what it promised.

In reality the Civil Service rewards people who do things to maintain the NEED for the Civil Service for each & every Govt.

This is seen in the article, candidates from outside the Civil Service should expect the minimum salary BUT existing Civil Service candidates would not !!!

i.e. Existing Civil Service candidates will know the Civil Service WAY and not endanger the existing procedures & methods.

Surely it would be an advantage to have real expertise from outside the Civil Service, the lack of skills is the reason that vendors get contracts agreed that are 100% to their benefit only.

For 50 years I have watched successive govts fail at large projects for the same reasons,lack of skills defining the requirements (Up front), lack of skills tendering for work to be done and lack of skills 'knowing' what is a good or bad contract for the specific project.

The Civil Service is the common factor, they never learn from their failures and repeat the same mistakes over & over.

There is no comeback for this failure as the Civil Service does not accept the fault is theirs !!!

At a senior level, having the 'correct' Civil Service background is the ONLY criteria for being suitable to manager these large projects.

When this is raised the reply is that they are there to do what they are told by the current govt.

They therefore cannot be at fault as they are simple servants of the Govt.

In any other area of endeavour there would be some consequence for the level and regularity of the failures, particularly as the flaws are the same, over & over again ... with no evidence of learning from previous failures at all !!!

I know the 'Grunts' at the sharp end work hard ... BUT the leadership from on high is flawed and refuses to see the problem is coming from them and not the workers or the Political leaders.

The political leaders cannot manage these projects day to day, they rely on the Civil Service to do this ... the Civil Service simply does what they have always done and the result is the same as usual ... late delivery due to lack of project control, lack of understanding of the issues and lack of 'carrying the can' for the failure.

:)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Opportunity Knocks ... and if you have any sense ... run & run & run ... far far away !!!

Although I agree with many of the points, some of your reasoning is naive.

The civil service generally accepts that it is not expert in all domains - especially IT projects.

Very rarely (if ever) do you see large IT projects run by the government directly - everything is contracted out - so it really becomes an issue of contract management.

Though I accept that GDS exists I don’t consider an LLM chat bot to be one of the really big projects that governments undertake.

One of the major issues is that there is no penalty for failure - DWP, DEFRA, Universal Credit, Criminal Justice - the list grows ever longer but nowhere are the contracted IT providers sanctioned.

I have seen external people come in at very senior levels and they can make a difference to their departments - however they most often fail when dealing with their IT providers.

But ‘late delivery, lack of understanding and lack of carrying the can’ are not limited to the civil service - it is just that it is less visible outside of public scrutiny

What is the proportion of IT projects that have delivered on time and on budget - in any industry sector ? (Answers on a postage stamp as anything else would be wasteful)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Opportunity Knocks ... and if you have any sense ... run & run & run ... far far away !!!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Computer_and_Telecommunications_Agency

Largely because they disbanded the subject matter experts. From the link.

“”During the late 1990s, its strategic role was eroded by the Cabinet Office's Central IT Unit (CITU – created by Michael Heseltine in November 1995), and in 2000 CCTA was fully subsumed into the Office of Government Commerce (OGC)”.

Anyone left now largely does endless rounds of Crown IT Procurement.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Opportunity Knocks ... and if you have any sense ... run & run & run ... far far away !!!

“This is seen in the article, candidates from outside the Civil Service should expect the minimum salary BUT existing Civil Service candidates would not !!!”

NHS salary banding works exactly the same…. and yes broadly similar barriers to external candidates.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Opportunity Knocks ... and if you have any sense ... run & run & run ... far far away !!!

One of the interesting parts of Pepys' Diary is seeing the early evolution of the English Civil Service. Although some things don't seemed to have changed in the ensuing three and half centuries.

[Anonymous Coward]

Could be fixed

The British Standards Institute is the UK's national standards setting body. Their chief executive is paid over a million quid a year for what I reckon is a sinecure. BSI exists as a Royal Charter Company, effectively has a statutory monopoly on setting standards in the UK, and is to all intents and purposes a public body. Much of BSI income comes from bilking companies to pay for access to its standards, but how else might they trade compliantly without knowing what the relevant standards are? So no competition, established in statute law, virtually no commercial risk, charge what they like, pay their staff what they like.

Have to wonder why somebody hiding in the shadows of the public sector can make a million a year, but we can't pay a national CTO any sensible salary.

[lglethal]

That seems an exceptionally low salary for being the required fall guy when it all goes to the dogs (again).

I guess there's plenty of opportunity to set up your much higher paid position at one of the Supplier's you're going to be helping get a large slice of that €23bn pie. So think of it more as a deferred salalry, I guess...

[matjaggard]

I'm very tempted to down vote just because I wish this wasn't true.

[alain williams]

Pay peanuts - get a monkey

anyone coming from outside the civil service "will be expected to start at the salary minimum if successful."

But someone from outside the civil service is exactly who they want. Someone with real world experience.

Appoint a civil servant and you will get someone who will want to continue to do things the way that they are currently done - as that is all that they know.

Who is outlining the role ? I suspect one of the monkey that inhabits Whitehall :-(

[Throg]

Re: Pay peanuts - get a monkey

One might think that it's deliberate to ensure "continuity" rather than hiring someone who might actually make a difference.

I couldn't possibly comment.

[Sam Crawley]

Re: Pay peanuts - get a monkey

Plus surely someone competent from the real world is going to be commanding well over the top end of that salary range, it's a very odd statement to make really...

[Anonymous Coward]

I could

I could sort it out and would for the low pay as a patriot and wanting to see my UK "great again" (MUGA??). But they wouldn't like my non-woke, freedom based approach. I couldn't support a coerced digital id for starters and even if I did it would cost too much to build the resilence comensurate with the dependencies and potential damage from failures or malicious action.

[Anonymous Coward]

depends on circumstances

I now work in the civil service having moved from industry. I've set up and sold my own company, the investors became rich, I've worked with other startups and big companies.

The base salary isn't great. The pension is bloody amazing. There is a trade off to be made. Do I want a relatively high salary and the taxes that go with it or the future pension.

For me there were few jobs locally which would pay much more than my salary plus equivalent pension contributions. If you are not in London and have no intentions of moving there but can get a senior position in the civil service it can be a good option. It's also been incredibly relaxing place to work compared to my previous roles. I'm working marginally fewer hours but with far less stress.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: depends on circumstances

Civil service pension is a ponzi scheme in all but name. Your contributions are wholly used to pay current pensioners and whole system works on an assumption that there will be no shortage of civil servants paying your future pension.

It is also highly likely that people fed up with uniparty's lack of direction, will elect a government that will scrap the whole system that is not sustainable.

[Catch-the-Pigeon]

Re: depends on circumstances

also the govenrment uses stats from ONS called life tables , they know roughly certain percentage won't reach pension age so they can rely on this money being used in other areas. The figures vary depnedning on the area and are average 15% , slightlly higer for deprived/less affluent areas.

[Like a badger]

Re: depends on circumstances

"Civil service pension is a ponzi scheme in all but name."

No it isn't a Ponzi scheme because current pensions are not paid by existing contributors. There is in fact no fund other than in name - government don't actually put aside their employer contributions, and employee contributions are likewise a notional deduction that merely reduces the cash salary paid and the cash saved becomes part of the government's Consolidated Fund (CF). This reduces the cash cost of employing civil servants by around 25%, saving taxpayers around £30 billion a year. Obviously when the pension becomes payable that's straight out of the CF, funded like all government expense mostly by taxpayers partly by govt borrowing. What this means is that the CS pension scheme acts as a vast interest free loan from pre-pension age civil servants to the taxpayer. A recent parliamentary report identified future CS pension scheme liabilities (ie the interest free loan) at around £189bn.

"It is also highly likely that people fed up with uniparty's lack of direction, will elect a government that will scrap the whole system that is not sustainable."

Well, here's a thought. As per the theme of the article, the Civil Service pays well below market rate for many roles, my own non-tech role included. If Reform win the next election and decide to pare back the pension benefits, and make civil servants far more accountable, then there's some consequences. First of all, they'll need to pay market rates for staff, that's a gap across all roles of around a third. So the payroll bill goes up by that much. Second, if the alleged Ponzi scheme is changed to a simple DC scheme, then government will need to actually put aside their contributions and those of employees, so on current headcount that's £30bn a year additional to find from taxation, and there won't be any savings to taxpayers on pensions paid until that's worked through the system - for a round number, say no material savings for about ten years.

Reform have committed to dramatically reduce the size of the civil service. Given that their total ministerial experience is Nadine Dorries, voters might want to be thoughtful about the party's competence. The Reform offer is "trust us, we'll work for you". Unfortunately how much would any sane person trust the movers and shakers of Reform? Much of the problems attributed to the uniparty arise from the fact that Britain's civil society debate on public spending amongst voters is immature and ill informed. Voters want public services like Denmark but taxes like Chad. Reform can't fix that.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: depends on circumstances

You've managed to string together two of the most disingenuous deflections used to defend the status quo.

First, your attempt at "disinformation" on the pension was a spectacular failure of logic. You stated:

"No it isn't a Ponzi scheme because current pensions are not paid by existing contributors."

...and then immediately proved that claim false by accurately describing a Pay-As-You-Go system. You confirmed there is no fund, that contributions go into the Consolidated Fund (CF), and that pensions are paid out of that same Consolidated Fund. That is the definition of current contributors (and taxpayers) paying for current pensioners. Using an irrelevant accounting distinction doesn't change the economic reality, it's just a bad-faith semantic trick.

Second, you trot out the tired, condescending cliché that:

"Voters want public services like Denmark but taxes like Chad."

The problem isn't that the public is unwilling to pay. The problem is that the public is already paying Nordic-level taxes and getting a collapsing service in return.

People are furious because they demand value for money, and they are getting the opposite.

We pay thousands a month in National Insurance and taxes, yet can't get a GP appointment, forcing us to pay again for private healthcare.

We pay for a police force that tells us they won't investigate burglaries, forcing us to pay again for private security.

Etc.

Most reasonable people wouldn't mind paying Denmark's taxes if they got Denmark's public services. What they object to is "Broken Britain," where taxes constantly rise while services evaporate.

Perhaps if the public's "immature" debate saw their massive tax contributions funding actual services - instead of being siphoned off to management consultancies and private contractors posting record profits - they'd have more faith in the system.

Your arguments, on both pensions and taxes, are a deliberate attempt to blame the public for systemic failures of waste, incompetence, and a broken social contract.

[Like a badger]

Re: depends on circumstances

"The problem is that the public is already paying Nordic-level taxes and getting a collapsing service in return....Most reasonable people wouldn't mind paying Denmark's taxes if they got Denmark's public services.

That, AC, is a load of shit:

https://ifs.org.uk/taxlab/taxlab-key-questions/how-do-uk-tax-revenues-compare-internationally

"What they object to is "Broken Britain," where taxes constantly rise while services evaporate."

Christ, you'd be at home in the Daily Mail comments section. The NHS is delivering more care faster than ever in its history, despite a lack of investment to create capacity, and still there's whiney twats moaning on that they want more. By all means vote for more, but that'll mean Danish tax rates. I don't believe you or the British public will accept that.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: depends on circumstances

Your response is a masterclass in deflection. You've cherry-picked my argument, insulted me as a "Daily Mail commenter" because you can't handle the facts, and then completely misrepresented your own evidence.

Let's dismantle this.

1. You Misread Your Own IFS Link

Thanks for posting the IFS link. It proves my point, not yours. You've fallen for the exact distortion that props up the "UK is a low-tax country" myth.

The IFS data (and all OECD data) splits taxes into categories like "Income Tax" and "Social Security Contributions."

In the UK, National Insurance (NI) is our "Social Security Contribution." As the IFS itself states elsewhere, NI in the UK has a very weak link to benefits and "effectively function[s] as a second income tax."

You are dishonestly only looking at the "Income Tax" line. The "productive part" of society (anyone earning an above-average salary) pays both Income Tax and NI (neatly split into employer's and employee bits, to obfuscate actual level of tax).

When you add Income Tax + NI, the tax burden on earnings in the UK is brutal. The UK system is uniquely progressive and heavily reliant on this small group of earners. Higher-tax countries like Denmark raise far more from broad consumption (VAT) and local taxes, spreading the burden.

The total tax take as a % of GDP (which is what your link's headline figure shows) is lower only because the UK doesn't tax wealth, property, or consumption as effectively, and our social security contributions are lower on average (but not for the high earners we're discussing).

2. You Are Using a Worthless NHS Metric

"The NHS is delivering more care faster than ever in its history"

This is the most disingenuous statistic you could have possibly chosen.

"Delivering more care" (absolute volume) is a meaningless metric when demand has risen even faster. Serving 100 people badly is not better than serving 50 people well.

The actual performance metrics - the ones that matter to patients - are the worst in history.

The official consultant-led waiting list is at ~7.4 million (Source: UK Parliament/NHS England).

The 18-week treatment target has not been met since 2016.

A&E performance is catastrophic, with the proportion of patients waiting over 4 hours at near-record highs.

Saying the NHS is "delivering more" is like claiming a restaurant with a 4-hour wait and cold food is "better than ever" because it has more customers in the building. It's an insult to everyone stuck on a waiting list.

3. You Ignored My Entire Point

My original point, which you're desperate to avoid, was about VALUE FOR MONEY.

The British public is paying the highest tax burden in 70 years and, in return, gets collapsing services. The social contract is broken.

We are paying for a premium service but receiving a failing one. That's not "whining" - it's a statement of fact.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: depends on circumstances

If you think that UK pays "Nordic-level taxes", please show your figures, or if you'd prefer, you can use these from a post that covered a similar subject from early June:

"IMF figures for government revenue as a %age of GDP in 2023 are listed as 38.21% for UK and 50.14% for Denmark, so that's also an interesting figure as it likely matches tax take better (spending doesn't have to equate to income whilst people are willing to lend to you).

Supporting that point is that IMF have 3% of GDP being spent on public debt interest payments in the UK whilst it's less than a quarter of that %age (0.66%) for the same period for Denmark. UK GDP to debt ratio is ~100% and the Danes' is just under 30%.

So they get taxed more heavily, spend less paying interest on public debt and more on services, all whilst paying down public debt."

I've not got a maths degree, but I'd suggest UK government revenue being 38.21% of GDP isn't the same as Nordic (Danish) at 50.14%. UK tax take would need to increase by ~31%.....

If you're happy to pay Nordic level tax for Nordic level services, please be sure to let your local MP know, otherwise, don't say we're paying what the Danes pay in tax....especially as whilst people focus on income taxation, VAT is charged at a higher %age in Denmark, and there aren't as many zero VAT rated products - even food gets VAT charged in Denmark......

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: depends on circumstances

For the "productive part" of society, the marginal burden is absolutely "Nordic-level." The difference is, as you correctly identified, our money is torched on debt interest instead of services. We are getting the worst of both worlds: a concentrated, high-tax burden for a low-value, collapsing return.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: depends on circumstances

Again, I'd suggest you're not entirely correct.....

I'll check my payslip, but I'm not paying 60%+ marginal rate*, my supermarket shop didn't have 25% uplift for VAT on everything (I like Jaffa Cakes - zero rated) and my last car didn't cost over twice what it should have due to VAT and car registration tax.

The "productive part" of Nordic societies are absolutely paying more tax than the "productive part" here - if you're "very productive" in Denmark from next year, you could be paying 66% out of your wages at the top end and then paying higher indirect taxes afterwards too.

*but I could be if my earnings were between £100K and £127K (and I didn't pay earnings above £100K into my pension). After £127K, marginal tax drops to 45% - go figure! What a shit-show of a progressive tax system we have.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: depends on circumstances

You're conveniently ignoring the 15% Employer's NI that's taken from your salary pot before you even see it.

That's the core of the rot. The "productive part" is already paying a total tax wedge that is at Nordic levels. We just get a "shit-show" of collapsing services in return.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: depends on circumstances

Two quick points.

- Denmark doesn't have the equivalent of employers NI, but they do have some mandatory payments the employer is on the hook for.

- are you saying you think that the employer would give you the NI they pay to the government if they didn't have to pay employers NI? It's a tax on payroll, not a tax on your pay, so I wouldn't hold my breath on that if I were you.....

Keep banging the drum for "Nordic levels"...... "IMF figures for government revenue as a %age of GDP in 2023 are listed as 38.21% for UK and 50.14% for Denmark"

[Phil O'Sophical]

Re: depends on circumstances

Voters want public services like Denmark but taxes like Chad.

But instead we pay taxes like Denmark, and get public services like Chad. That isn't sustainable either.

What we'd like is value for what we pay, which means civil servants doing the jobs they're paid for, and doing them thoroughly and properly. Unfortunately, as witness some of the posts here, they think they're doing that even when the rest of us (those who actually have to deal with NHS management, or HMRC, know from personal experience that they're delusional.

Reform can't fix that.

No, but there's no sign that any of the other parties are capable of it either.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: depends on circumstances

But we don't actually pay taxes like Denmark....... UK Gov share of GDP is 70% of what the Danish government's share of GDP is (and they're paying less on debt interest, as they've got much lower national debt, so they're spending more of their government money on services for the population).

I'm not saying there isn't inefficiency in the public sector, as that would be plainly untrue, but let's kid ourselves that we pay the same tax levels as other countries do - we just pay more tax than we historically have and don't get more for it as we're paying much more interest on our national debt (as historic governments chose to borrow rather than tax).

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: depends on circumstances

"Voters want public services like Denmark but taxes like Chad. Reform can't fix that.'

The Farage clown show would guarantee we got public services like Chad and Denmark/Norway/Sweden levels of taxation.

[martinusher]

Re: depends on circumstances

We in the US are dramatically scaling back the Federal Civil Service, reducing job protections for Civil Servants and generally moving employment more into line with how the private sector works. So you'll get a pretty good idea about how life under Reform would work without having to take a chance on it and find out the hard way. One of the immediate results of this kind of tweaking is to make the Civil Service more responsive to politics -- you're either with the Administration's program or you're out on your ear.

As for the 'uniparty' this is what you get when you have the political system cleaned out by "There Is No Alternative". You still have the problems and frustrations of everyday life without any viable alternative being proposed -- the system is the system and the tools and techniques that governments might have once had to try to tweak it are now largely absent. The result is frustration and a tendency to jump on any populist bandwaggon that sounds remotely attractive.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: depends on circumstances

The state pension is a ponzi scheme as well !!!

I cannot understand how it is ignored because eventually it will be too dear to keep existing.

There are calls to kill off the pension in the UK and somehow replace it with something cheaper.

The problem is that it WAS sold as something you pay into over your career then get it back (with interest) when you retire as a state pension BUT it is really seen as a 'benefit cost' that is paid if you live long enough.

A pension is not the same as claiming unemployment benefits and was never intended to be.

As it is not invested but simply pays the pensioners of TODAY, the workers of TODAY are complaining at the cost.

The people, who are near retirement, have paid towards their pension via NI(National Insurance) their whole career and feel that they have earned the pension.

The concept has been mis-sold as the cost of state pensions have risen over the decades.

The solution for the future has to be EVERYONE pays towards a private pension that 'tops up' a minimal state pension.

NI must as a consequence be reduced BUT this is a huge loss of revenue ... money that can be spent NOW !!!

Current-day pensioners feel that they are under attack, having worked 30+++ years, paid taxes & NI then govts and current workers say that they should have their pensions reduced and/or taxed. They have worked within the system as it was defined and feel that they should get the same deal that pensioners in previous years got ... after they had paid for it from THEIR Taxes & NI over the years.

:)

[graemep]

Re: depends on circumstances

" Your contributions are wholly used to pay current pensioners"

That is how the state pension works. NI goes into a fund that is used to pay state pensions, but slightly more comes out than goes in each year, so, in effect, current NI is used to pay current pensions. The inevitable shortfall will be met from other taxes.

Exactly the same will happen with the civil service pensions.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: depends on circumstances

>The pension is bloody amazing.

But unless this is some MP like role where you get a full pension after 4years. You are only going to be in this job until the next reorganisation or the next leak/hack/scandal where you are forced to resign.

[Anonymous Coward]

They will earn less than the 20 something grads that latest outsourced body shop are putting into the various crap-tastic projects.

[Anonymous Coward]

100,000 Chuck Bucks eh?

Hardly cover the cost of an inner London parking spot.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: 100,000 Chuck Bucks eh?

That's £5,713.42 a month, assuming you don't have a student loan.

£4,000 a month to rent remotely decent working class terraced house in a nice area of London.

£1,700 easily for bills, groceries, clothes and whatnot.

£13.42 left to pay into stocks & shares ISA.

Then your partner (assuming you'll find one) will have to work to cover all the rest (holidays, big ticket purchases, school fees).

Life of a CTO.

[Guy de Loimbard]

Hold my pint.

I may just apply for the role for shits and giggles as I'm sure I am unlikely to get past the first gate on screening!

[Throg]

Re: Hold my pint.

That occurred to me as well.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Hold my pint.

Go for it.

The appointment will eventually be whoever the DSIT and Cabinet Office ministers choose, so always a risk of them eventually appointing one of their mates, or a party donor, but having been involved in such things the actual process to get down to a final shortlist will be done by the book. The ad includes all of the criteria, how they will be applied: read it, read it all, and read it again, including all the dull links and policies. I've been involved in Civil Service recruitment, most people just stick in any old CV they have to hand, they don't read the criteria, or the process. So most applicants just waste the sift panel's time as each one has to be read and scored by three people, yet most applicants don't answer the basic question of "how do you fit our essential/desirable criteria?" Importantly on the application explain how you fit the advertised criteria, not values/capabilities/behaviours (CS Success Factors) as those are considered at interview. Do not assume that somebody will scan your CV and spot how it matches the criteria - no matter how strong your experience, the personal statement needs to elaborate on that experience, and the CV needs to be structured so that it shows off your capability against the role criteria, not structured to to show off the stuff that you think is impressive, relevant, or where you did your best work. I'd say 95% of job applicants make it difficult for whoever sifts their application because they don't put themselves on the other side of the table, and ask what the recruiters want to see. Personally I'd say don't touch AI - lots of applicants use it, it is often easily spotted, and then that applicant is "no".

Important point is that a personal statement of up to 750 words is required. The CV needs to be tailored to the experience they are asking for, but then the statement spells that out in prose. In the private sector, if somebody sent me a CV and a 750 word covering letter I'd put them straight in the "no" pile. In the Civil Service that personal statement is likely to be the first thing screened, and applicants should make full use of the word limit.

[elsergiovolador]

Re: Hold my pint.

This whole description reads like a parody of bureaucracy proudly explaining why it takes six months to fill a desk. Imagine designing a “merit-based” process so opaque that 95% of applicants fail not because they’re unqualified, but because they didn’t decode the ministry’s sacred scrolls of “criteria vs behaviours vs values.”

Then the punchline: after all that Kafkaesque filtering, the ministers just pick one of their mates anyway. It’s the perfect Civil Service ritual - waste hundreds of hours proving fairness before doing the exact opposite.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Hold my pint.

The world over. I have a couple of minion-level temporary jobs, ideally intern/coop students.

But officially it only needs highschool level qualification and it's a union government lab. So I have to interview any internal candidate that meets the requirements (finished high school) first, and in theory have to offer it to any union member first (which they aren't going to want because it's temporary)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Hold my pint.

"This whole description reads like a parody of bureaucracy proudly explaining why it takes six months to fill a desk. Imagine designing a “merit-based” process so opaque that 95% of applicants fail not because they’re unqualified, but because they didn’t decode the ministry’s sacred scrolls of “criteria vs behaviours vs values.”"

Put another way, 95% fail because they don't RTFM. You seem to be suggesting that people who ignore written guidance and fail to demonstrate that they meet the job requirements should be given some extended licence? Or you'd like your public sector employees to ignore due process and hire who they want even if they don't comply with a process designed for clarity of what the organisation is looking for?

Recently we recruited for a relatively junior admin position for a senior colleague, with a requirement to have executive support experience. That attracted 139 applications. Surprising as it may be to you, I do have a day job, the panel sift and interviewing are to help out colleagues, and I'm not going to interview all 139. We wanted between 3-7 people for interview, and we do want them to show that they can read, understand and apply processes and instructions, and we found 4 who had the relevant experience and and met the criteria and demonstrated that they did. I'm simply not wasting my time trying to fish out the relevance of over a hundred people's experience scattered across often carelessly structured CVs when I've got candidates who have put the effort into showing that they have the relevant expertise.

You prattle on "a parody of bureaucracy proudly explaining why it takes six months to fill a desk" but it took the Civil Service a couple of months to hire me, it took us about five weeks to fill this admin role, yet in my last private sector role the recruitment process starting from my application was six and a half months and involved one telephone screening interview and then four subsequent interviews culminating in an interview with the CEO of that £4bn a year business.

But, stick with your anti-public sector crusade. Soon enough we'll have mini-Trump as PM, and he'll dismantle the UK's public sector and all checks, balances and due process in the same way as the orange felon is in the US. But I'll wager he won't remove IR35.

[graemep]

Re: Hold my pint.

Then the punchline: after all that Kafkaesque filtering, the ministers just pick one of their mates anyway.

Obscuring that is the point of the Kafkaesque filtering. A lot of government processes are complex so they can be manipulated to get the outcome you want. The private sector is not free of this either - it is a huge part of what things like management consulting are there for.

Its more like a mate of a civil servant will get the job than a mate of a minister.

[amanfromMars 1]

The most inconvenient and extremely disturbing of honest truths is ....

..... anyone worthy .... but rightly disinterested in more than adequately fulfilling and drivering the role ..... will be contemplating and planning the taking down of useless governments rather than attempting to ensure they remain essentially much as before and exercising administrative and executive powers rather than them completely ignoring and discarding any past and present allegiances to any and all currently rapidly failing programs and protocols ...... Universal Self-Serving Instruction Sets .....and embracing instead ..... well, a Brave NEUKlearer Virtually Real World Order Reset is what Merlin the AIMagician and Mega Beta MetaDataBase Physicians offer.

Quite whether there is anything at all which comes anywhere near even close to competing with or preventing that in any MAGA centric arsenal is not even debatable whenever so evidently doubtful.

I Kid U Not.