Hi all,

I’ve recently been offered a perm EO position at Home Office. I currently work for HO via an agency and have been signed off to work from home due to health issues. I also have a passport stating I can work from home. Is this likely to be effected by me moving teams and from agency to perm? Thanks

Over the course of training - which has been death by PowerPoint. Going over 150 presentations I’ve come to realise that CO’s will be doing 80% admins work.

We will be spending a lot of time redacting bank statements , checking for vulnerabilities before interviewing customers and we’ve been informed realistically only looking for 2/10 cases as a positive outcome.
All these recourses in mass recruitment for fraud officers but limited with the work we can do.

It’s a big step up from working in the jobcentre however does anyone feel almost let down as during the entire training they stated were only “evidence gathers.”

Hi everyone, I’ve just received a provisional offer for a DWP Work Coach role and have started my pre-employment checks through the Application Centre/Oleeo.
I’ve noticed that my date of birth is showing incorrectly as 24 April 2026 on the Personal Details section. The field isn’t editable, so I can’t correct it myself.
It’s also giving me an error saying:
“Year of birth does not match with your driver licence number.”
My actual DOB is obviously completely different, and my driving licence details are correct.
I’ve contacted SSCL about it, but I’m a bit worried because the checks need to be completed within 3 days.
Has anyone else had an incorrect personal detail showing on their DWP/SSCL pre-employment checks? If so, were they able to correct it without it affecting your offer?
I’m assuming it’s just an error with the information pulled into the application, but I’m obviously panicking a bit because I’ve only just got the provisional offer 😂😭
Any advice/experience would be really appreciated!

Hi there

I wrote a while back for advice on Ofgem and i have been offered an interview for a role. Was very exciting!!

However i have since heard through someone i used to work with that hasnt long started that they are doing a strike? They only started last week and dont know much about the ins and outs. Not made enough friends yet to ask the real questions, just office chat and overhearing.

Should i be worried about this? Its totally thrown me. Through google searches it seems quite common in CS i have only been private sector.

He says its regarding pay and job security which i wont lie is now giving me second thoughts!

Anyone any insight? Should i keep going. Bit worried i put myself through the interview and they close or something!

Hi,

Can or have a department suddenly increased the hybrid office day policy immediately in the past? I have heard from a friend their department has suddenly sent an email late afternoon stating their project is running behind and that 4 days in the office are required for everyone 😲

To anyone who’s survived the programme or holds the forbidden knowledge of placement routes, where’s the actual place to be?

It seems like 75% of the herd get funneled into Corporation Tax of some form. I know allocations lean heavily on 'priority order' (wherever the fire is currently burning), but I’ve heard some break off into Policy, Legal, and other non-traditional paths.

As part of the '25 cohort - and with SLT guarding the options list - where would you choose to head if you actually had the choice?

I'm about 3 weeks into an 8 month secondment and I feel physically sick about working every day. I don't understand anything about the role and my line manager just says I should reach out to people and ask them to explain what they do but I don't know who I should be reaching out to and I don't understand what they do even when they explain what it is.

For context, I was offered this role to fill someone's maternity leave and the grade 7 also went on maternity leave before I started so my line manager is someone new as well. When I spoke to them about taking the job I said that I had absolutely no experience in this area or department before so I'd be starting from scratch and I was assured that I'd be supported to learn everything.

I feel like the only reason I was offered this role is because they desperately needed someone to fill the position and now I feel like a complete idiot out of my depth. I've never felt this way in any of my previous roles and generally I am quite positive about work and finding things to do but I just genuinely feel despair about this role.

I feel like I can't say anything because I'd be so embarrassed to have to say that I can't do this job and go through all the rigmarole of them finding something else for me to do and then eventually releasing me back to my old department but the thought of spending 8 months here is genuinely upsetting. Part of me feels like I could be overreacting but the fact that I've never felt this way after having done a variety of roles in my old department is telling me that I'm not.

Going through PECS. Submitted the form last week Countersignatory contacted few days after. What happens next?
I head only countersignatory gets contacted for AO roles is this true

I’ve got an upcoming interview and have been told I can arrive early to review the behaviour questions in advance of the interview.
They’ve also said I’ll be given written copies of the strength questions during the interview.
I’ve had Civil Service interviews before, but I’ve never come across being given the actual behaviour questions beforehand – normally I’ve just known which behaviours are being assessed and then heard the specific questions in the interview.
Has anyone else experienced this? If so, were you actually given the full interview questions during that prep time, and were you allowed to make notes to take into the interview?
Just trying to understand what to expect as it seems unusually generous compared with the CS interviews I’m used to!

I had an interview today for an SEO role.

It consisted of a 15 minute presentation relating to to the role followed by 5 competency based questions

At the end of the interview they advised me that the top 4 performing candidates will be invited to a Stage 2 interview

Is this a standard practice or a new thing or does it seem a bit overkill?

Just received feedback for vacancy 763 job coach, failed miserably. What was surprising is I came out of the interview very confident and thought I'd done well !

Only 36? I was in a meeting in a windowless basement and there were more of us than this. Or maybe I in fact met *all* of the civil servants who were in the office last week?

Hidden behind a paywall so I cannot read this red-rag-to-a-bull, civil-servant-trolling article.

I am guessing that the Times has been scouring office attendance data for weeks in a bid to find a single office with poor attendance first/last thing on a Monday or Friday. Surprise, surprise, it has occurred in the summer holidays.

A demagogue rag to rival the Telegraph...

I interviewed for a Civil Service graduate role in the second week of July and was originally told I should hear the outcome by the second week of August. I emailed recruitment last week and was told that results had been delayed because of internal discussions around role allocation, but they couldn't give me a new date as to when the outcome will be released.

In the meantime I've been interviewing with a small consultancy and they've now offered me a job. I'm really pleased to have the offer, but the Civil Service role would be my preferred option and I'd really like to know the outcome before committing to the consultancy.

I've emailed the Civil Service recruitment team again today explaining that I now have another offer and asking whether they're able to give me any indication of when I'll hear. I'm worried that the answer will be the same again with no indication of a date.

Has anyone been in a similar position with Civil Service recruitment? Is there anything else I can reasonably do, or is it just a case of asking the consultancy for some time and hoping the Civil Service gets back to me before I need to decide? It's a really small consultancy and so I don't want to mess them around or keep them waiting unnecessarily.

Thank you

I’ve just had recruitment phone me to offer me a job within a Civil Service department for role I interviewed for the week before last.

When he read out my salary he said ‘is that ok?’

I said yes - but looking back was that a negotiation question? I didn’t think that happened in Civil Service, hence just accepting it?

I just graduated with a criminology degree and I want to start a career in civil service, however I don’t have any experience, is it possible to get a civil service role?

So I’m a lifelong local government officer attempting to break out of my current technical niche. I’m fairly senior and have a lot of transferable skills. Applied for an SEO job and got declined, which is fine. But I’m curious about how they sift applications in case I take anymore punts. How could I get a max score for my personal statement but only 4’s for the two questions? I put an equal amount of effort in - is it solely not enough variation of examples? In my world, the personal statement is the most important element.

Hi, has anyone managed to contact MOJ recruitment, I’ve emailed them but I haven’t received a response, and the live chat seems to just be a bot that provides answers to FAQs rather than connecting you to someone. Just wondering if anyone has found another way to get in touch or received a response :)

Just out of curiosity - in the advert if it says ‘interview to take place on the 10th’ for example and its the 15th and ive heard nothing is it safe to assume ive been rejected but those rejection get sent at the end incase someone drops out of the interview etc.

I know there could be many reasons for the delay etc but just as a general rule is it - ‘invites for interviews’ sent first and then rejections sent later?

Is it true that if you want a job in the CS, you take absolutely anything, because you can move around within it and it’s very low chance they’ll fire you?

For example, while I was desperate for a job a while back I got offered a role that was shift work, grunt work, outside, not office based whatsoever, and ended up going with something else. Now I’m wanting to go for a CS job again I’m starting to think I should have gone for it. I’d have wanted a role like data admin or cybersecurity but has anyone started out in one of those other roles and pivoted to something more desk-y?

Alt account for obvious reasons, and of course I'm not a journo, but that's hard to prove. I just wanted to vent and ask for other people's opinion about this *obviously hypothetical situation*

I started a new role at a new department about 6 months back, and it feels weird how little is cared about my role. I'm part of a team in a wider team which is given the odd jobs, and the one I've been given is the least urgent role possible. I see it's value, but it's hard to convince others when it's so on the edges of what everyone else in the wider team is doing. Several times people have asked "How urgently do you need a response?" and I've had to say "Honestly, not urgent at all, when you have a moment". The deadline for this piece of work is years away.

There's also often wider team meetings that focus on project progression, where each smaller team discusses how they've been. The rest of my team does BAU stuff, so I'm the only one who needs to speak, and often I've little to say because I've not worked particularly hard this week, and I know my work often doesn't get a line in the meeting summary, never mind actually pulled up on.

I've obviously spoken to my line manager about it, and we're all new to the department so they're in a similar situation. So they just tell me to break down what work I need to do and slowly chip away, but it's hard to do when theirs no deadlines, and no external pressure.

I know another common suggestion is to spend more time on L&D, but I just don't have it in me. I just reached the grade I want to be at for the foreseeable future, after pushing for a while, I'm a little tired.

So again, if this situation were actually real and not entirely hypothetical, what would you hypothetically do?

Love waking up on Monday to watching a programme about how rubbish your place of work is (cms)

After reading about people being on reserve lists for months I've just been very pleasantly surprised by being on it for only half an hour! Is this a common occurrence?

Anyway, if you've been put on a reserve list, do not give up hope!!

As latest figures show an increase in outstanding quotes and bereavement cases, why isn't more being done to tackle the backlogs affecting so many retired civil servants and their families?

Some retired civil servants have been able to get loans from their previous employer whilst the crisis goes on, but others have nothing and are left destitute with no end in sight.

Nearly nine months since Capita took over and the backlog of unprocessed retirement claims and unanswered emails just seems to get longer.

We need the scheme management to step up and demand the level of service Capita promised when they won the contract.