Promotion within Civil Service

thunderb0lt

Thanks for the replies everyone. It has been an interesting read so far..

lincroft1710 wrote: »

Depending on the Agency, progress in the Civil Service can be very slow, many don't progress beyond AO or equivalent.

A word (or sentence!) of warning. You may see yourself as whizz kid promotional material, your line managers may not. I've seen too many newcomers who thought they were doing the job better than anyone else, find out the hard way that they weren't.

If you're promotion material, your line manager should notice this, or if he doesn't his line manager will. Be aware that if you are keen to take on more work than your colleagues, management may well take advantage of you.

To be honest, I do feel like a whizz kid in the sense that I am noticing errors that people that have been in the role for years are making.

At my 3 month probation meeting my line manage did ask me where do I see myself in x years time. I answered I don't know as I don't know what the scope is for progression. I then asked how likely is it that I will be able to progress, he answered it's down to me.
He gave me an example of someone who progressed from my current grade to two grades higher in the space of a year but a reason for this is that she was temping for a while before she was made perm and there was no EO type grade role in my department, therefore she went up to HEO equivalent.

I think what I need to do is show that I am keen and look out for any training opportunities. I think I have a better chance to progress by applying for a higher role should it become available rather than promotion from within.

Where I was working previously I did notice that there are loads of people that have been in their roles for more than 10 years but are still at the lowest AO grade.

Andy_L

one2escape wrote: »

To be frank if you are wanting to move quickly up the scales the Civil Service is not for you. Promotion boards over the next few years will be few and far between. You can move up a couple of steps of the latter in one go however its rare for it to happen and usually its a specialist post. The civil service is a steady job (less than it was before). Long term there will be chances of promotion but if you after a rapid move up then you properly in the wrong job. Think of it as the hare and turtoise

Depend on how close your agency is to the civil service you may be able to get onto one of the Civil Service's internal or external fast stream schemes

http://faststream.civilservice.gov.uk/

http://faststream.civilservice.gov.uk/FAQs/Already-a-Civil-Servant/