Civil Service Fast Stream or Big 4 (Deloitte) Graduate Scheme

KiKi

What do you want at the end of a graduate scheme? For best opportunities career-wise, I'd take Deloitte. You'll be competing amongst high flyers, and have lots of opportunities to make a difference, but you may not be one of the top people there because most people are competitive, innovative and working in a very fast environment. But you'll learn loads, and be expected to hit the ground running.

For great work life balance and an opportunity to make a real difference, and be in the top performers I'd take CS. Good pension, perks, you're not selling your life away - flexible working, good life balance. You can go home at 1700 not 2100. You won't get a fresh, innovative environment, though - it is far more stale, and slow moving than Deloitte. Depends what you want from a programme.

Go with your gut!

glider3560

KiKi wrote: »

Good pension, perks, you're not selling your life away - flexible working, good life balance. You can go home at 1700 not 2100.

Apart from the pension and flexible working, I'm not really sure what other perks the CS offers?


If you go for the CS, make sure you get into a stream that offers you transferable skills. Otherwise you'll just become a career civil servant where you're only ever employable in the CS because, frankly, you aren't actually good at doing anything. Get on a finance or IT stream, then you'll gain skills that are very valuable outside the CS.

steampowered

Personally, I'd take the fast stream in a heartbeat. I imagine it will give you much more interesting and more varied work than tax at Deloitte.

That said I think you really need to hear from people who have actually been through these schemes and can tell you what their work is like. Perhaps a forum like thestudentroom.co.uk would be a good place to go?

ReadingTim

Szac8549 wrote: »

Which do you think has the better exit opportunities after 4 years? The pay is definitely higher in the fast stream for the first 6 years or so but i guess it starts to even out after then.
Which has the better reputation?

Exit strategy into what?

Civil servants go into the private sector, usually into private practise/advisory firms, whereas those already in private practise tend to go in-house. Rarely would a civil servant go straight in-house, and frankly, wherever you've been, 4 years' experience isn't an awfully long time - you're not going to be very senior wherever you want to go, so don't get too many delusions of grandeur, regardless of what the recruitment marketing claims....

jonnygee2

Start in the private sector. When you start on private grad schemes etc, you are generally eager and have lots of time. If you work hard you can quickly advance your career.

The civil service fast stream is not recommendable. They move you around several departments, where you'll find that people are generally not overly happy to have this 'bright young thing' who has no idea what they are doing parachuted into their department. You end up doing low level admin roles before finally, after four years of no pay rise, end up in a kind of middle management role you may or may not like.

There are very few things I would happily delegate to the government to manage, and that list definitely doesn't include my own career path.

Szac8549

Thanks this has been so helpful!

This sounds a bit silly, but I'm not really sure what exit opportunities I had in mind particularly.

I feel like with the fast stream it may be more difficult to move to the big4 or other private sector companies, particularly without a qualification or specialist knowledge. (Obviously a move to the big 4 would not be in tax)

On the otherhand if I was 4 years into Deloitte and had my ATT and possibly even CTA tax qualifications, perhaps it'd be more easy to get a job in tax through the Civil Service at HMRC / DWP or in the private sector?

Do people agree with this?

Szac8549

(So easier to go from big 4 to civil service grade 7, than civil service grade 7 to big 4)

jonnygee2

I feel like with the fast stream it may be more difficult to move to the big4 or other private sector companies, particularly without a qualification or specialist knowledge.

You are 100% correct. The nature of the fast stream means you will not pick up a specific skill set or progress your career in a linear fashion, making moving out much harder. In addition, there is a general stigma in the private sector about people in the public sector.

A lot of people leave the fast stream part way through, but for grad-scheme level roles.

On the otherhand if I was 4 years into Deloitte and had my ATT and possibly even CTA tax qualifications, perhaps it'd be more easy to get a job

Again, I feel you are right.

Generally, unless you are extremely motivated to provide a public service and dedicate your life to improving the country we live in (which I fully support, but it is not for everyone) then I would say that the private sector is a better early career choice.

Spidernick

If you go to Deloitte go in with your eyes open. They want their pound of flesh and some (and are by far the worst for this of the Big Four). I don't know about Manchester, but their Reading office had a terrible reputation for presenteeism a few years back and, even with their so-called 'agile working' (as recently introduced) little seems to have changed and many fall by the wayside.

I would say that you would never work a flat week there, so lots of unpaid overtime to be factored in. You can get promoted quickly there though, if you are prepared to put your home life second.

Voyager2002

My comment: first, try to decide what you want after the four years doing one or the other of these. That might make the choice simpler.

And secondly: neither of these schemes have actually offered you a place. At one time, only 0.2 per cent of the graduates who applied to Fast Stream received a job offer (unless they were Oxford or Cambridge graduates, when the percentage was more like 20 per cent). So it is not really sensible to spend a lot of time deciding whether you would accept the offer of a Fast Stream place when statistically it is not very likely that you will be given an offer.