From Bloomsbury to Whitehall: what I learned by moving from UK HE to the UK Civil Service

In 2019, having worked for the University of London for more than 20 years, I decided it was time to expand my horizons. So I thought why not try the Civil Service? After submitting a number of applications and undergoing a few interviews at different government departments, I finally succeeded.

Here’s some things I learned.

It's not that far to go

Moving from higher education into the Civil Service as a content designer might sound daunting. But here's what I think:

1. You're good to go: working in HE as a content designer is really challenging. Not only do you have tricky stakeholders, but you have serious policy challenges to navigate. If you've survived HE and are now thinking about your next move, trust me, you’re in a great place to start.

2. You’ve got the skills: content design in government is the same as content design in HE - although the processes you follow and the teams you work with might look totally different. If you’ve delivered user-centred content in HE, trust me - you’ve already got the skills you need.

3. You don’t need to have worked in government before. The Civil Service is actively looking for people from outside, especially those who can bring new ways of thinking. If you’re good at cutting through jargon, making things easier to understand, and dealing with multiple opinions, you’ve already got a head start.

The recruitment process is fiendish, but fair

If you haven’t yet applied for a Civil Service role before, you will quickly find out that these jobs, especially content design roles, follow a really structured recruitment process. In fact, it might look very similar to the one you have in HE. The big difference is that you don’t just have to be able to demonstrate that you meet the requirements of the job description. You also have to demonstrate that you meet the relevant Civil Service Success Profiles. 

The Civil Service aims to offer objective recruitment, based on your skills and experience. Everyone goes through the same process and the same steps. At GDS, for example, our recruitment process involved 3 steps:

1. Application: this is where we scored each application against a list of objective criteria, and then created a shortlist of possible candidates

2. Content design skills test: at this stage, we aimed to test candidates’ ability to perform a typical task for the role

3. Interview: this final stage was our opportunity to test the experience of our candidates, particularly in relation to the Civil Service Success Criteria

   
   

To help GDS applicants, I worked with colleagues to develop a recruitment guide for content designers. But we weren't alone in developing this. Across the Civil Service, there’s a real desire to ensure that people are given the best possible chance to present themselves well.

If you’re applying for a department role, have a look to see if they’ve published guidance for applicants - and follow it.

There are a lot of digital roles

Unlike HE, where many digital teams consist of just a few people, in the Civil Service, there are a lot of digital roles. You can check them all out on the Digital, data and technology framework (incidentally, the first content project I worked on at GDS).

When I was first at GDS, I spent quite a bit of time asking just what all these people did:

• delivery managers

• product managers

• performance analysts 

• user researchers

• service designers

• Interaction designers

What I learned was that, in HE, because there just aren't that many UX people around, I had to perform all of those roles myself. I used to describe my role as spending 80% of my time doing all of these things - so that I could reward myself with a glorious 20% of time spent on content design. Imagine my relief when I joined GDS to learn that I no longer had to do all that to deliver good work.

But having all of that experience gave me an edge, because:

• It meant I had a good understanding of the challenges my colleagues faced in those roles, even if I wasn't doing the work myself.

• I'm really efficient - something that will be true for any of you who are used to having relatively few digital resources.

The challenges are the same - but they are so much bigger

My manager warned me about this when I first started. Also from an HE background, he told me that I would find all of the same challenges, but they are just so much bigger. And that I needed to get my head around this.

Challenges I dealt with while at Birkbeck included:

• The fact that content design wasn’t well understood

• Managing stakeholders who weren’t that interested in my expertise

• Working with people who have need urgent results and don’t want to spend time designing digital solutions

• Out of date and legacy content / content debt

• Information that doesn’t work for users

• PDFs 

Before I arrived at GDS, I assumed that I wouldn’t have these challenges to deal with, because everything I’d heard and read about GDS suggested that they’d sorted everything out (or perhaps that was my wishful thinking?).

Well, guess what. If you are a content designer in the Civil Service, not only do all of the same challenges exist, but they are much much bigger, simply because of its size and complexity (and landscape of shifting priorities).

For example, one of the biggest challenges I found working for the Civil Service was figuring out who my key stakeholders were for each of my projects. At Birkbeck, although stakeholders with an axe to grind might pop out of the woodwork and affect my work, it wasn’t that common because I knew who everyone was. In the Civil Service, figuring out who your stakeholders are is like nailing jelly to the wall - just when you think you’ve figured out who they all are, another 20 people might show up in a project meeting, each with their own views and opinions of your work.

This really tests your stakeholder management abilities - and I would say is one of the key skills you need to succeed as a content designer in the Civil Service. Luckily for you, if you’ve worked with academics (some of my absolute favourite and also most challenging stakeholders), then you’ve already gained the valuable experience that you need to do well in the Civil Service.

There are lots of opportunities for content designers

In the Civil Service, because it is so big and there are so many specialisms, there are lots of opportunities for content designers. 

When I was at Birkbeck, I stayed in the same role for close to 20 years - although the role changed completely while I occupied it. That’s because there was no other job at Birkbeck that I could or wanted to apply or move into. So when I wanted to expand my horizons, I had to apply to another institution - which ended up as GDS.

It’s not like that in the Civil Service. I was at GDS for less than 4 years, but in that time, I was promoted twice - first to Content Product Lead (the name they have for heads of content teams) and then Lead Content Designer. I got two of those as an expression of interest - which is a time-limited internal move that enables roles to be filled while waiting for the recruitment approval process to finish. And it meant I was able to try out the roles before applying for them as permanent roles.

But I also applied to 3 other roles while I was there (I think the opportunities just went to my head a bit), none of which I got. But I got some amazing interview experience, and going through the process really helped me to figure out where I wanted to go next.

If you want to make the move, here’s what I suggest

If you want to make the move to the Civil Service and join their amazing content design teams, I advise you to:

1. Learn the basics of GDS content design standards - they’re public and free to access.

2. Get used to writing job applications that answer criteria directly, using bullet points, STAR format (Situation, Task, Action, Result) and plain English.

3. Be ready to talk about how you work with others, how you handle feedback and how you make decisions based on evidence (even if it’s just feedback forms or student data).

4. Start networking: reach out to content designers who are already in the Civil Service, look out for online meet-ups and go to conferences.

Get in touch if you'd like some career coaching

I'm a qualified coach, and excited about helping content designers make the best of themselves.

I'm now offering career coaching for people who want to make the move from HE to the Civil Service (and vice-versa)

Please get in touch if you want to find out more: jane@roxboro-design.co.uk