Sam is a King’s graduate who works for the Civil Service Fast Stream. Upon applying to the fast stream, he was living in Japan and knew that he wanted to work in public service, and the fast stream seemed like a decent way to do it! Sam applied, got in and is now in his second year at the Civil Service Fast Stream. In the latest (slightly lengthier than usual) post in the “My First Steps” series, Sam shared his experiences with us. And keep your eyes on the blog, as next week we’ll have more from Sam, where he talks about his role as a disability ambassador for the Fast Stream.
The Civil Service Fast Stream is the government’s headline graduate scheme which aims to accelerate you through into a management position in government. It covers all central departments and some of the wider bodies.
It takes place over four years, so you go in and do four different six month placements and then two one year postings and after that, you do an end of scheme assessment, and then you are set out into the wild. So I’m in my fourth placement now, doing six months with the Department for Energy and Industrial Strategy.
I’ve been at the Ministry of Defence for six months. I worked at HMRC in finance, and then I’ve recently done six months with the Metropolitan Police.
What have you found are the best and most enjoyable parts to work on?
The best part about it is the area in general actually. The work is fascinating for the most part. The areas you end up working with are things that are deliberately engaging and intellectually challenging, which is what I enjoy the most.
For example, the fact that you find yourself dropped into a specialised area and then very quickly find yourself being asked to give a take on something. And then you go “well I’ve been doing this for all of two months, am I really qualified?” That’s what it feels like sometimes, but actually, that is really one of the best parts of it.
Then also I’d say the level of responsibilities. My first posting had an extremely high level of responsibility, and it was pretty scary, especially as it was my first proper office job. But then you find yourself very quickly being listened to, and you see that actually your opinion matters and people will listen to it and you, therefore, you strangely have a high level of responsibility considering how junior you are.
Did you feel quite well supported? Even though it was daunting?
The fast stream is really good at pushing the point to your day-to-day manager, that you are not there as kind of a free resource to do the filing, you are there to develop, and to learn, and to really get to the most exciting chunks of the work you can.
You have a manager who essentially manages your day-to-day activities, but on the Fast Stream you also have a cohort leader who is mainly there from the Fast Stream, and they are your manager for the duration of your time and make sure you’ve passed all your elements. They also make sure that your other manager, who are managing your day-to-day work understands what you need and what the Fast Stream requires you to do.
The Civil Service Fast Stream is kind of a developmental programme, as you say it’s not just a two year or four-year work placement. Do you feel that’s been the case, do you feel like you’re developing through the programme?
There is structured learning that goes on throughout the programme, mainly day sessions and online courses. But the significant learning just comes from being parachuted somewhere, and you have six months to do a job and learn a job.
You’ll learn a vast set of skills from wherever that posting is, and then you’ll be up to speed, and people will be like “ah I’m doing an outstanding job here. but it’s time to move on.” You get picked up and dropped somewhere else, and you just start again.
Some of the areas I’ve worked in, for example, departmental finance; HMRC dealing with billion pound budgets, and then 1st of September switch out, and suddenly I’m an analyst, and I have to work out how big data works. These kinds of things come with necessary development to them.
By the time you’ve done one or two of these kinds of “drop-ins” you will get to learn; A) How this department works, B) How this team works. Within these drop-ins you will get to learn anything else that’s going on and the actual content of the work. You’ll feel pretty comfortable moving, knowing your cohort leader will support you, and you’ll get an idea of what you need to do in the first week.
My advice for the first week: don’t send any emails, just read anything you can find. Commit to learning the subject matter. Everyone has their own processes of how they deal with it, but you are well supported, and you really benefit from the breadth – you end up with a 10-year career over 4 years basically.
You studied international politics at kings, and that sounds like a perfect fit straight into the service. Did it help you with the application?
It didn’t help in the application. The application is degree blind, so as long as you have a 2:2 from a university that’s a box ticked and they wouldn’t know what you studied during the application process. It doesn’t matter, you just need a 2:2 and be able to demonstrate the behaviours.
What was the application process like?
The assessment systems are assessing your potential, not your experience. So they are looking for a kind of person, a mind-set and a mentality, as opposed to a set of predefined criteria. Having work experience helps, but if you can demonstrate that you’ve done certain behaviours it help. For example; if you’ve shown that you can lead people or organise things, or that you can understand things really quickly and meet deadlines. If you can demonstrate those things through university, through societies, through anything really, then they have as much weighting as internships.
So not having work experience is really not necessarily an issue, they are really just looking for behaviours and the kind of person you are.
The application process changes year on year. When I did it, I was supposed to do some psychometric testing initially, which I didn’t have to do because of my dyslexia. Then I had to do an online test, an e-tray test, a mock emails and writing some policies. Then I had the assessment centre, which was a very long process. Mine was 12 hours, but you do get a longer time if you have learning difficulties. It’s not so much looking at what you did, your CV doesn’t really matter, choice of degree or choice of university. Again, it’s really about what behaviours you can demonstrate and how well you can come across.
Given that you just explained that it’s not about work experience and university degree – what sort of behaviours did you demonstrate?
Thinking about the things I had done that weren’t really office related but did demonstrate behaviours they were looking for. For example, regarding adaptability. The fact that I moved to Japan at two weeks’ notice and survived; I could use that as an example of something where I’ve changed the circumstances around me.
Equally, for some of the high-pressure situations questions, my experience as a law supervisor and in some cases where you have to act kind of quickly and make decisions, organise teams at short notice, and then I talked about my dissertation and managing deadlines. These were pretty simple sets of behaviours, and if you go online and google “civil service competencies” you’ll be able to find and read up on them.
They are all transparent. One would be seeing the big picture, underneath it there would be like five or six good behaviours that demonstrates that competency. If you think that you’ve actually got all of those, then you have an example of that behaviour and it should be enough.