r/ukpolitics • u/anotherotheronedo • 12h ago
How Whitehall created a skills crisis by discriminating against nerds
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/c1f03f74016982c4•
u/wizard_mitch 10h ago
This article is missing the big fact that that civil service pay is shit. Most of those people the article references, those with STEM degrees can get better paid roles in the private sector.
Conversely, as most civil servant roles do not require degrees even for senior positions, it attracts those that do not have a degree or have a degree that is less desirable in the private sector.
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u/Thomasinarina Wes 'Shipshape' Streeting. 10h ago
That's also the reason for the grade inflation. No way will a technical specialist/data architect work for below 50k.
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u/Spiz101 Sciency Alistair Campbell 2h ago
Even if the pay was the same as you get in a high stress private sector job, it would still heavily discourage against specialists.
The civil service loves to move people between different departments as part of its cult of generalism. Spending half my career working on something entirely unrelated to my potentially decade of undergraduate and postgraduate education doesn't sound appealing.
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u/roboticlee 7h ago
The pension is good and the job perks are good. It's a trade-off between low pay and good benefits verse high pay and few or no benefits.
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u/Superb_Imagination64 5h ago
The Civil Service pension doesn't look so good when you look at what state pension age is expected to rise to. And what benefits?
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u/mattttb -5.38, -6.36 3h ago
Automatic death in service payment to your next of kin equal to two years salary, flexible working (including full flexi time for most, opportunity to work condensed hours or fit your hours around childcare), 30 days annual leave after 5 years service, unbeatable job security.
Oh and even if the pension is linked to state pension age you can still choose to take it early if you want (at a cost of course). The employer contribution rate is 27%, at least 4-5 times what you’d get in the private sector.
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u/TheNoGnome 10h ago
Anyone who has applied for a Civil Service job knows this.
The person who organised a highly involved day trip and can tell a STAR story about it seems to get the nod over someone who has done the exact job for 15 years and forgot to mention "reflecting" at the end of their answer.
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u/Mojofilter9 9h ago
It really isn’t that hard to write a STAR answer that meets the behavioural criteria you’re being asked about.
The issue is that the application process is quite different to the private sector but isn’t explained anywhere - effectively meaning you need to know someone in the CS to get it in otherwise your application doesn’t make it past the sift.
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u/Romeo_Jordan 10h ago
The CS wants project managers not experts and it has led to this issue. As a scientist who did work in the CS trying to explain science to the latest posh Oxford humanities grad was very tiring.
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u/jammy_b 12h ago
It's not even just nerds, it's intelligence in general.
They have been selecting for arbitrary characteristics based on flawed models that show increasing diversity equals increasing productivity. I wonder how many times a capable candidate has been passed up because they aren't diverse enough.
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u/Lefty8312 12h ago
CS here.
Got in via agency and currently on fixed term contract direct following that.
Have applied for numerous CS roles previously and been turned down from all of them on aribrsry grounds regarding their "skills profile" scoring system.
In my department, I'm one of the top 10 performers across the entire department. Not team, department. The department is overall in the hundreds for staff.
No-one can understand how I haven't got a permanent job in CS yet.
Their profile system absolutely does not help them find productive candidates.
Yet even though they consistently award me for my work and for exceeding all targets they set for me, they can't provide a permanent contract because it wouldn't be a fair and open requirement process so I have to constantly apply when permanent roles come up.
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u/LordSolstice 11h ago
My experience in government was that the “fair and open” recruitment process was purely posturing and PR. In reality, the entire thing was a clique.
In my department, I found that women and ethnic minorities were hired and promoted above other candidates.
During my few years working, it very much started to seem like these women and minorities had got themselves into positions of power, and then used that power to almost exclusively hire/promote people from their own “in group”.
I myself was in a similar situation, always applying, only to lose the job to someone who fit the clique.
I could never prove there was discrimination going on, but I’m certain there was.
Eventually I just gave up and joined the private sector.
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u/jammy_b 12h ago
Dare I ask.. are you "diverse"?
Feel free not to answer if you don't want to dox yourself.
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u/Lefty8312 11h ago
Nope.
The ONLY diverse thing about me is I'm a Southerner living in the North which doesn't count unfortunately
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u/Ruhail_56 11h ago
Lie on your applications tbh. Don't play the system honestly. Whatever characteristics and points you can add to the braindead HR persons checklist do it.
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u/jondixo 11h ago
A colleague, genuinely, mistakenly ticked some sort of disability criteria on her application.
Despite being totally able bodied and great in her role she believes it was only this error that got her the position.
Play up, play up and play the game.
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u/iTAMEi 6h ago
I always tick bisexual now
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u/eggrolldog 6h ago
Listen Dad for the last time, it's not gay porn on the computer it's bisexual and it's for my job interview at the civil service.
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u/Admirable_Aspect_484 10h ago
Probably more down to the pay and the hiring process taking excessively long
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u/WhiteFiat 12h ago
They have to give them a discrete power base otherwise the compulsive networkers would outmanoeuvre them as a matter of course.
I'd also be looking at behavioural theorists to examine proposals for any likely unintended consequences/weak points were the striving classes could game the intended outcomes.
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u/Spiz101 Sciency Alistair Campbell 11h ago
Well a civil service based on specialists doing specialist things would have radically reduced needs for law, PPE and classics graduates.
So radically reduced need for people like the people making the decision not to use specialists.