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DfE Digital, Data and Technology is part of the Department for Education. We aim to deliver world-class services that improve the outcomes of children and learners in education and care. This podcast series shines a light on the human stories behind our digital and technology projects. You’ll hear about how we build and run our services, their impact, and the lessons learnt along the way. You’ll also get an insight into the people who work here and the culture we’re building.
Episodes
Monday Jul 04, 2022
Job application do’s and don’ts
Monday Jul 04, 2022
Monday Jul 04, 2022
Here is the brand new series of our ‘Think digital, act human’ podcast. We shine a light on the stories of the people behind our digital and technology projects.
In this second series, we’ll be focussing on Civil Service recruitment.
In this episode, our host, Adaobi Ifeachor, gets to know Vita Shapland-Howes, Recruitment and early talent team lead for DfE Digital and Technology.
Vita gives us an overview of the recruitment process from start to finish. She also talks about what panel members look for in an interview, what makes a good job advert and name-blind recruitment. So plenty of tips for both candidates and employers.
Transcription
Adaobi Ifeachor
Hello. Welcome to Think Digital Act Human, a podcast from the Department for Education. Where we tell the everyday stories of digital specialists working on extraordinary projects.
Welcome back, listeners. This is the very first episode of our second season and we've got a bit of a doozy for you. So this season we've decided instead of doing an eclectic mix of subjects like we did in the first season, we’re going to focus the entire season on recruitment. And why are we doing this you might be asking. But we decided we wanted to demystify the entire process. So for people who would like to go into the civil service but have no idea where to even begin because there's so many different types of jobs, there's so many different types of departments, even. For those types of people this is going to be a great season for you, but also for people who haven't really considered the civil service. This should be enlightening for you too. I'm particularly thinking about you digital and tech specialists, because when do you get your qualifications, when you get your experience, is the civil service the first place that people think of for a digital tech career? I'm not convinced, but perhaps this recruitment series, lifting the veil, will kind of inspire you in new directions. So our very first guest of our second season is the brilliant Vita Shapland-Howes.
Hey, Vita, how are you?
Vita Shapland-Howes Hey, Adaobi. I'm very well, thank you. I'm very pleased to be here.
Adaobi Ifeachor So for our listeners, who are you and what is it that you do?
Vita Shapland-Howes So I am the digital and technology recruitment and early talent team lead. I lead in all things to do with attracting new people to work with us in the Department for Education as a digital and technology specialist. And we do all the recruitment for this area, as well as the onboarding of digital and technology specialists. So when you join and you need all the kit to do what you need to do, as well as meet all the people that you need to meet, we help set up your sort of beginning and introduction to your career within the Civil Service.
Adaobi Ifeachor What are the different stages in terms of like you hear whispered on the internal grapevine that somebody might want to offer a job, open a job vacancy. What happens then?
Vita Shapland-Howes
In terms of how we do it now? We do ask generally just for CVs and personal statements. So that's normally how you start off the process with us. But instead of doing that to an email address, like you do with other organisations, just submit it through there or through LinkedIn, we have to put every job role onto civil service jobs. That's our kind of portal, that's our front door to our recruitment service and process. So even if you see our jobs on LinkedIn or other job boards, you will have to be led to that site. And then it might take a while for you to hear back from us.
Adaobi Ifeachor
So let's dig into some of the things that you said. Is the deadline I like a hard, super hot deadline? If you miss an application deadline, could you try and work out who the hiring manager and just sending you stuff anyway?
Vita Shapland-Howes
It is a super hard deadline. That's a very good point, Adobe. No, you would not be able to send your CV to the hiring manager. I mean, you could definitely get in touch in case there are other opportunities in the future. But because everything goes through a specific system, it is a no go after a specific time and generally it's at midnight on that closing date.
Adaobi Ifeachor
Okay, this is the part that I found super different when I applied for my role as a product manager was that it seemed to be completely blind. They didn't want me to include my name anywhere. They basically were like I don't tell us anything that might identify anything beyond the generic about us. I don't even think I put the years of my jobs. I think I put like two years here. One year they're like, I was super generic. And then when I was at the BBC before this, I helped to launch a pan company, Women's Network, and I was super proud of my work there but then I was like, oh no, but they’ll know I’m a women if I put that down so I kind of stripped that out.
So I mean, tell me a bit more about that because that does feel like something that is quite different.
Vita Shapland-Howes
So blind recruitment means, as you've rightly said already, it's about taking off anything that would identify you as a professional.
Adaobi Ifeachor
That sounds like it could be quite scary because there might be a fear of like how out of date someone's experience might be.
Vita Shapland-Howes
I still think that you can get that narrative without having those specific dates. And if there are still questions after seeing a CV and you think there may be gaps that’s something you can prob and when you meet them at interview stage.
Adaobi Ifeachor
Okay. So you mentioned a sift stage. What is this sift stage?
Vita Shapland-Howes
The vacancy holder would receive the CVS and the personal statements, and they sift with the interview panel. So it's not just one person sifting. We want that panel to show the diversity of our organisation and ensure that there's diversity of thought.
Adaobi Ifeachor
To some roles I'm just surprised by how overwhelming the amount of applications are. And so you might have heard about a lot of companies are starting to introduce automatic sifting. Does the DfE do anything like that.
Vita Shapland-Howes
At the moment we don't do that. Every application that comes through our door, we have to sift and we have to score. If we were to receive an overwhelming number, say, for some roles, we receive 100/120. In those cases, we can say, and we say on all adverts, the kind of main criteria that we can sift against. So we wouldn't have to necessarily sift again at every single essential criteria. But we have to give you a score, at least on one of those.
Adaobi Ifeachor
Well, talking about adverts, that makes a really good segue way into our first clip because we're doing this episode a little bit differently.
Our production team have been squirrelling away some audio clips in the background and they've spoken to a few different people in the recruitment journey and we're going to play like a few different clips. I'm really interested to get like Vita's take on what we learn from these. The first one is from Alison Walker, who works I think she works with you, doesn't she Vita? So she's in the recruitment.
Vita Shapland-Howes
She does. She's in my team.
Adaobi Ifeachor
Awesome, we’re going to play that now
Alison Walker
If they're picking a lot of essential criteria they're only making it more difficult to attract candidates. We want people who can do the job, but you're not going to have the perfect fit. You know, you want a candidate who can grow and develop into the role.
Adaobi Ifeachor What are a couple of the essential kind of criteria categories that might come up?
Vita Shapland-Howes
So a lot of our roles do have technical aspects to them, a security specialist or those that are software developers, there will be things that they really will be essential to the role, if you are not able to code at all. But of course, there are going to be the sort of softer skills that entail sort of, let's say, stakeholder relationships. That's the kind of key one that we have on our job descriptions a lot, because within a huge organisation like Department for Education, you will always have different teams of different people to work with or to manage. And so that's the sort of kind of essential criteria that will come up time and time again.
Adaobi Ifeachor
Here's the thing. Here's what I really want to flag for people who are considering applying. When you're writing your application answer, what you should really focus on is not the desired skills. Because actually, as someone who's been on a panel, we're not marking you on the desired stuff. We're making your essentials.
Vita Shapland-Howes
That’s a really good thing to point out. Desired criteria are there to show what the panellists may take into consideration, particularly if there's a tie break between 2 candidates. You know, if there are 2 candidates at the end that both meet the essential criteria fully, and that's when people tend to take the desirable criteria into consideration. If you feel that you don't meet the desirable criteria, that shouldn't stop you from applying.
Adaobi Ifeachor
These are like two of my tips. Take it with a pinch of salt whether this works for you or not, but I find it really useful to put like little headings for each. Say like the first essential criteria is implication and the next one's like great team working or something along lines. I'll have a paragraph that's about team marketing and then I'll have a paragraph about communication. So when a really busy interview panel is looking through your application, they don't have to hunt around trying to find them. Have they demonstrated good teamwork work? Because I can't find anything there.
Vita Shapland-Howes
That's a really good tip. Yeah. Make it really easy for the panel to, like, align what you're saying with the essential criteria.
Adaobi Ifeachor
Definitely. And here's my second tip, dear listeners, for my role, they had a video of what it was like to work in digital and technology. And I watched the video. I noted down who was speaking in the video then I found them on LinkedIn and I sent them a message and I was just like, ‘Hey, I'm applying for this. I'd love to know more about you’.
Vita Shapland-Howes
So proactive Adaobi
Adaobi Ifeachor
Well, this is the thing because you've got the job ad and then you've got things that you're never going to put in a job ad, like what the culture is like, what the difference might be between the aspirations and vision of a company and then like, what is it like day to day, really? So I contacted a couple of people. One person got back to me and we just had like a remote cup of tea. Obviously it went well because I'm here.
So tips aside, I want to hear from you. What is an example of a bad advert? Do you think.
Vita Shapland-Howes
So? If I saw an advert that takes me more than a minute to get to grips of what the job is, that's a bad advert. There's this like known thing within the industry that it takes somebody longer than a minute to understand a job advert they will not apply. And so, we need all our job adverts to be really short. If I have to keep scrolling down to get to, what would I actually be doing? That to me is an awful advert. I think if you want to grab a reader's interest, it has to be done really, really quickly.
Adaobi Ifeachor
We’ve got another great clip from Alison. We're going to play that now.
Alison Walker
We find that not many people do actually email us, but we're always very open to that and probably a great way to also find out any more information about civil service recruitment and any hints and tips or anything like that. All of our team are on LinkedIn. You can usually find us because we should all have the same cover photo of our logo and that's where we have links on our pages and we'll share posts about civil service recruitment.
Adaobi Ifeachor
Vita, so have you have people contacting you about recruitment or like jobs or tips and things like that?
Vita Shapland-Howes
have actually through LinkedIn mostly. That's when they're seeing our adverts and I think it's a great way for candidates to find out a little bit more about the role and our process. Normally though, if it's about the role, I'll put them in contact with the vacancy holder, the person who knows most about the team they're going to be joining and the role itself. But initially, I'm very happy to have that kind of first conversation with them. To me, it's like the personal touch and understanding a bit more of the context behind an advert is really important actually, before you apply and can give you an idea of also what to do in the first stage.
Adaobi Ifeachor
Definitely. I think this is something I learnt from my BBC days as well. People never tell you this, but when you are applying internally they want you to make the effort of like going along to see that team. Like go along, ask some questions, have a cup of tea with them. If you're an external candidate, obviously that's not something you can do. But as you said, they could always reach out to you. The question I have for you though Vita is, have you ever experienced any approaches where you're like, Yeah, they shouldn’t have done that. Or like, that's a bit too aggressive.
Vita Shapland-Howes
Not at all. Honestly, I don't see how it could be any form of mistake, by just saying ‘hi I'm interested’. Honestly, no. In all my time in this team, three years in this team and X number of years in recruitment elsewhere. I've never had that with a candidate.
Adaobi Ifeachor
Okay, awesome. I wasn't sure what kind of horror stories we were about to get, just there
Vita Shapland-Howes
Oh no, unfortunately I don't have any gossip for you no.
Adaobi Ifeachor
So we've got another great clip this time it comes from Luke Slowen. And he's talking about the difference, or at least he starts talking about the difference between the public sector and the private sector. So let's give that a listen.
Luke Slowen
There's quite a lot of difference, actually, we find between, you know, public and private sector experiences when it comes to recruiting for technical roles in government. A lot of it comes down to semantics and language, actually. So what people see in the private sector as a solution architect or, you know, might have a slightly different feel in government. So we have a cross-government digital data and technology profession framework, capability framework. We do try and follow that as much as we can and tailor it for our own purposes.
Adaobi Ifeachor
So you just heard from Luke Slowen there, who's the head of architecture at the department. The first thing I'm thinking there Vita is that if you're doing a particular technical job outside in the private sector, you have to be aware that when you come to the public sector, it may well be labelled something completely different from what you are used to.
Vita Shapland-Howes
Yeah, totally. And you need to be able to try and map your skills and experiences across and we can help you do that. And I think, you know, going back to your question around reaching out to us, if you are struggling to possibly map your current role with one of ours, we'd be very happy to talk to you about that. I'm just thinking of a typical one in government, another one is the role of the delivery manager. Now, this is a job title that's used across govt, but in the private sector they're called Agile Project Managers or they could be called Scrum masters.
Adaobi Ifeachor
I do remember when I was looking at jobs for this, I kind of worked as a business analyst and it was very, very much a sort of technical team. But then when I came to look for tech on the website, there wasn't really a tech thing, but that was digital. And then when I was looking at business analyst roles, I noticed the ones that were in the DfE, at least the ones advertised at the time, were much more focussed on data. What would have been a data analyst role somewhere else was a business analyst role here. And then when I was looking at, okay, well what is it that I do? It was more, it fit more with the product management side, the product owner, product management side of things here. So I think like you have to kind of be willing to broaden your horizons of what the title is called and look at the roles and the kind of responsibilities of that role.
Vita Shapland-Howes
Definitely, yeah.
Adaobi Ifeachor
So we are coming towards the end, but I think there is one more clip from Luke Slowen where he talks about the culture of DfE. So this to me and I beg you, dear listeners, to put some weight on this, too. This, to me, is like the most important thing, because you could have a great pay cheque, you could have like a really reputable brand that looks great on your CV. But if the culture of the place you’re working in isn't great, you could just end up like dreading coming to work each day. But I hope that we can give you a flavour of what the culture here is like. So let's have a listen to what Luke has to say.
Luke Slowen
A lot of what DfE is about is the people. The people that are here are passionate about education, social mobility, social work, you know, children, families, learners. That's the world in which we're operating. And lots of people, you know, come here because of that. In government it's no surprise you know, we don't pay as well as the private sector. We can't match those salaries and benefits necessarily. But there are a lot of benefits to working in the civil service and particularly in DfE. That's why I'm here. I'm here because I want to make a difference to learners in the UK. I see all the great work we do. Some of it might be a bit more behind the scenes of the department. As architects, people doing the work to create good services and make sure that data is well used all across the department. But it is really making a difference to children, families, young people, social work. It really is. And it's a great place to work.
Adaobi Ifeachor
Okay. We're kind of at the end of our time together Vita. And it's been really fascinating, actually, kind of fun thinking through a lot of these things. I'd like to end on that idea of money, though. Oh, I would like to touch on that money thing.
Vita Shapland-Howes
Let's do it.
Adaobi Ifeachor
So Luke said that, you know, basically you're not going to you're not going to get rich working for the public sector. That's not what's going to happen here.
Vita Shapland-Howes
No
Adaobi Ifeachor
But I think it's pretty well paid. I've got a salary that works well for the north west. But talk to me about like that salary range and the fact that it's not hidden basically. Some job adverts, say competitive when it comes to salaries, whereas its something that's pretty visible. As a candidate, If I'm seeing a transparent salary range, can I haggle within that?
Vita Shapland-Howes
Very good question. So it's dependent on the profession, in all honesty. So there are professions where you're able to say, haggle, as you say, more than in others. And I would always say it's worth asking and having that conversation. The reason why certain professions have more flexibility within a salary range that is advertised is because they're harder to fill roles. That means that there is more demand within different industries for these people. Say, for example, for technical architecture, that's what Luke was talking about or architecture roles. There are pay flexibilities so we can discuss pay with the candidate. Whereas for actually recruitment roles, for example, for a role like mine, I wouldn't be able to to haggle unfortunately. So poor me. But yeah, I definitely recommend people getting in touch again if they want to talk about what the possibilities are and we'll put you in touch with our specialist pay team.
Adaobi Ifeachor
I appreciate this might be a little bit of a conflict of interest here, so feel free to say no if you aren't able to give an answer. But what's the most effective way for people to kind of negotiate their pay? I'm assuming that at interview is not necessarily the right place to be doing that.
Vita Shapland-Howes
No, absolutely not.
Adaobi Ifeachor
Right.
Vita Shapland-Howes
You need to wait for your offer to come through before you even broach that subject. And I know that's different again, in other recruitment processes. Some people ask it upfront, for example, to make sure that salary expectations align. Whereas with us. please do you get your offer through first and that's when we can start discussing, but not before.
Adaobi Ifeachor
Okay, awesome. Well, you've got it. That first listeners if you're the person who's like, you know, before you've even sat down and had your free cup of water, you're asking what salary is and when payday is, then that may not actually stand you in good stead.
Vita Shapland-Howes
Doesn’t come across well? But it's such an important topic, salary. I think, you know, there's a movement at the moment to ensure that there's salary transparency across different industries and I'm really proud to say that the civil service does have that. Not only do we publish salary ranges, but we also publish all pay for public sector workers online. So you can see what people earn. And I think that is really important for diversity and inclusion purposes.
Adaobi Ifeachor
I'm a big advocate of people being really open about their salaries, like just as I mentioned earlier where I contacted someone on LinkedIn, I've had someone contact me before and wanted to know what it's like to work here. And I've been really open about my exact salary because I truly believe that that's the only way that you kind of remove gender pay gap and other types of pay gaps, right? If we're all super honest and feel comfortable to be open about our salaries, then you go in feeling like, you know, you have some power and you have some confidence when you are negotiating because you know what the real wages are.
Vita Shapland-Howes
Yeah. And it gives those with less confidence the ability. I think it opens the door for people to say actually no and demand it if they're not on the same salary as their colleague who has the same experience and skill set.
Adaobi Ifeachor
Just as a quick aside, there's one company product called Buffer. If you Google Buffer, salary, transparency, they've got a spreadsheet that lists everybody in the company. I don't think it lists the name, but it lists that role, that location in the world and what salary they're on.
Vita Shapland-Howes
I'm going to have a look at this.
Adaobi Ifeachor
It's an American company, I think, and I don't know if we're ready for that level of transparency in the UK. But anyway, I want to thank you for listening. Again, we hope that you enjoyed this. We hope that you learnt something new. If you did, leave us a comment on our blog, which is DfE Digital and Technology blog. Let us know what you think. And of course, you can ask questions of myself, the pod team of Vita, either on the blog or
Vita Shapland-Howes
anytimes, get in touch.
Adaobi Ifeachor
social like linkedIn. So a big thank you to our guest Vita Shapland-Howes and for all the people who provided our clips, Alison Walker and Luke slowen. So if there's anything else that you'd like us to cover in a future pod, of course, please let us know. Our Twitter is DfE_DigitalTech. I've already told you about our blog, and this pod was brought to you by the Department for Education. The producers are Rosie Roff and Louise Mullan. And I'm your host, Adaobi Ifeachor. Join us next time. Goodbye.
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