New to Public Sector Contracting - DWP

[sreed]

I'm not a techie myself but have been working tech project manager contracts for a few years now, almost all in the fintech space. Regular work has shrunk a lot in the sub-sector that I work in and so I've been looking at Public Sector contracts, almost all inside-IR35 which I'm absolutely fine with. Took me a while to figure out how to get past the screening stage for public sector contractor hiring but I'm there now.

I have my first (and apparently the only interview during the hiring process) interview (the recruiter said 20-30 minutes at most) with a DWP hiring manager later this week. The JD itself itself is very light on details and just a lot of very generic guff that you would expect for tech project/change management in any organisation. The recruiter doesn't have anything more to offer details-wise.

I haven't had an interview in donkey's years and never worked in the public sector. I appreciate it's quite a woolly request but I would be grateful for any very general tips on public sector contractor interviews.

Thanks in advance!

[edison]

I can't comment on central government departments like the DWP but I have worked in local government as well as other not for profits like charities and mutuals. I've also worked at many private sector companies ranging from FTSE100s to startups, so I think I can contrast between them. I've led IT recruitment too for several of these organisations hiring a lot of people and I've done many interviews for perms and contractors.

The key difference for me is that in the public sector, hiring and interviewing is quite rigid in structure and approach. There is usually a 'person spec' as part of, or complementing the JD and a lot of emphasis is put on this when hiring managers construct the interview questions. The HR department usually provides guidance that all the questions should link to the person spec and specific competencies in the JD.

Therefore the interview structure is usually based on competency based questions. e.g. 'please describe a time when you did X' or 'can you give us an example where you achieved Y'. I've come across this style as an interviewee for contract roles in several public sector organisations.

Even if the JD looks light on detail, have a look again and see if there are any competencies listed.

I'd be a bit surprised if it was only a 20 minute interview. The local government client I worked with still typically did hour long interviews with contractors based around a JD and person spec. The only difference was that the questions were usually less rigid.

Are you sure there is just one interviewer? Panel interviews are often used in the public sector, for contractors and perms. Maybe worth double checking.

[sreed]

Cheers edison, that's really helpful!

I'll check again with the recruiter (it's through PSR) and given the lack of details, I wouldn't be surprised if I was given incorrect/incomplete info. You're probably right in that it might just be a screening interview by someone at DWP rather than a full blown final one. 30 minutes is definitely not enough time to do competency based questions on all the things listed in the person spec.

[b0redom]

Last time I interviewed at a central government role (not through an outsourcer), there were questions about demonstrating you've worked as part of a team/done mentoring, technical tests, service management/ownership/excellence, and I'm a techie.

[northernladuk]

Not going to help you much but I've been for a couple of interviews for both gov depts and local government and there was no clear commonality at any of them. I interviewed twice for the same central unit and both interviews were different. I would say the main difference will come down to who is interviewing you I am afraid. I've had a few that were general chats with the client manager starting with what I would do in certain instances and quickly moving to a general chat about how bad PMs are when it comes to service and the age old problems we face. Others were very formal, had up to three people in and were driven in large by a checklist of questions or areas to cover, even down to testing me on the ITIL framework.

In the central ones they did have a form to fill in which covered technical ability, cultural fit and the like. Not quite questions but they had to fill their observations in after. It wasn't that useful in the interview but I suspect it's to cover their arses should someone complain after an interview.

One thing that is important though is understanding the culture which is very different to private sector. It's all process driven with a ton of bureaucracy. Also understand that this is public money they spend, not profits etc. Hard to explain if you've not been there but in private sector they need bang for their buck from the project and it's usually to drive efficiency and profit. That's not always the case in public sector. They've an odd way of spending their budget so it doesn't get capped next year which always made my head spin.
I am not saying every team in every body is like this but that's my general experience.

If they ask you a question about something is holding you up what do you do as a rough example, you do not tell them you'll personally take charge, bang on tables and do whatever it takes to get it fixed. The answer will be more around documenting/managing the risk, escalating and waiting. The shouty bang tables to get results types rarely do well in the public sector from my experience.

Hope that helps a little

[malvolio]

I wrote a full answer just before our broadband went down...

Anyway, to summarise, and in addition to the above:

- It will be competency based interviewing, but 30 minutes seems awfully tight for that.

- Expect questions on stuff that are nothing to do with the role, the interviewers have targets to meet around a host of woke and equality issues

- There is a chance you are there to make up the numbers and satisfy their open tendering processes.

Good luck anyway!

[Paralytic]

Knowing what i know about those that have worked and recruited within the public sector, just hope that they've not already identified the successful candidate as someone from another department, and you're one of the people being used to show that they've considered other candidates too. This is probably more common with FTC than inside IR35 contracts though.

Good luck. A single 30 minute interview does seem short.

[sreed]

Thanks all, appreciate your comments.

The recruiter has reconfirmed that it's just one 30 minute interview on Teams followed by the hiring decision before the end of the week as they need the person to start first thing in the new year. He also sent me an even more generic set of competencies (though a much shorter list now) with a slightly different role title and content that leaves me no better informed as to what the role actually entails Hopefully I've not been put through just to make up the numbers!

Anyhoo, I'll prepare as best as I can based on what I've been given, and considering I'm new to the PS, it's all going to be a learning experience one way or the other. Will feed back to the thread just in case it helps someone else.

[malvolio]

Thanks all, appreciate your comments.

The recruiter has reconfirmed that it's just one 30 minute interview on Teams followed by the hiring decision before the end of the week as they need the person to start first thing in the new year. He also sent me an even more generic set of competencies (though a much shorter list now) with a slightly different role title and content that leaves me no better informed as to what the role actually entails Hopefully I've not been put through just to make up the numbers!

Anyhoo, I'll prepare as best as I can based on what I've been given, and considering I'm new to the PS, it's all going to be a learning experience one way or the other. Will feed back to the thread just in case it helps someone else.

I strongly suspect Paralytic and I are right in our suspicions. Still, you won't know if you don't try!

[ensignia]

Expect questions on stuff that are nothing to do with the role, the interviewers have targets to meet around a host of woke and equality issues

I'm glad your broadband went down.