My journey applying to the Civil Service began when I left my teaching career of 18 years. I worked in an amazing, supportive primary school but the workload had left me burnt out and wondering if I could manage this work/life balance until retirement. The short answer was no. With a heavy heart, I left the profession that was my vocation and wondered if I was skilled or good enough to try a completely different career.

I actually worked in the Civil Service when I was 18 years old as an Administrative Assistant for the Crown Prosecution Service and it was a completely different application process to what it is now. I honestly didn’t know how I managed to secure that role but after a conversation with my line manager, he told me I was employed because I’d given detailed examples of my sixth form and volunteering experiences which aligned with the scenarios they put to me.

I know I loved working in criminal justice so I began looking for roles through simple search engines. I found a link to Civil Service positions through the gov.uk site but each role looked so overwhelming and truthfully, I didn’t really understand the titles, never mind the job descriptions.

Writing a CV and statement was a rollercoaster of emotions and an extremely steep learning curve. The first 8 CVs I wrote were awful and not even in the right format (PDF) so I joined a Facebook group called Exit the Classroom and there was a link mentioning a LinkedIn post called the Unofficial Civil Service Guide. That’s where I saw Nathan White advocating making careers in the CS more accessible for anyone interested. I was excited to read the guide as I was hoping it would help to demystify the jargon I was facing when reading job titles and descriptions.

This is where I learned more about CS behaviours, writing better personal statements, what a reserve list was, improving my CV and the STAR method. There wasn’t much about the interview process but I tackled that bridge when I came to it (there’s a specific guide for this now!) A good tip is to put the job description into Chat GPT and ask it to explain it to you as though you were 10 years old. It’s amazing how many roles you are actually experienced to apply for when it’s broken down into similar language!  

My first CS interview out of teaching was for the role I’m currently in now. I was so nervous and it was on Teams but I had made plenty of notes, STAR statements and had some questions to ask the panel too. I still find the hardest thing is to remember my scenarios as I learned that having a least 3 or 4 stories for each behaviour gives a better range of experience but my memory isn’t the best when I’m nervous so that’s something I will always have to work on. I felt that the interview didn’t go very well especially when answering the strength questions but I ended up on their reserve list for 3 months.

In total, I applied for around 40 roles, was invited to 5 interviews and came second in a Grade 7 interview at a prison as an Equality Advisor (I reached for the stars with this role). Over the 7 months I applied for jobs, I worked as a Teaching Assistant to cover the mortgage and bills and it was when I asked (again) for interview feedback 3 months after my first interview that I was told they’d received funding to recruit and was I still interested in a role! I happily accepted and now work as a Casework Manager in criminal justice. 

The work life balance is wonderful and I am learning so much meeting many talented and supportive colleagues. It’s a fixed term contract until September 2026 but I know I’ll learn so much and hopefully find a permanent role in this department before then.

The Unofficial CS Guides gave me the confidence to apply for roles that I would never have initially thought I was skilled enough for and they explain the application process in detail, breaking down each step to make it easy to understand.