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Job summary

Are you interested in starting a career in finance? If so, this role is for you!  Joining the Homelessness & Rough Sleeping Finance Team in Government is the ideal opportunity for enthusiastic individuals who are eager to get started with their career and gain a professional finance qualification at the same time.

No matter what your background is or your grades we want to hear from you. We’re looking for a team player who is committed to learn whilst supported by a friendly, inclusive, and flexible working environment where you can bring your whole self to work.

The Civil Service helps the government of the day develop and implement its policies as effectively as possible. It covers every aspect of life from passports, driving licenses to crime prevention and housing. You can join a diverse award-winning team (Government Finance Awards 2022) taking on real responsibility from day one. Working in Government can provide a rich career for life with fantastic flexibility to shape your career and progress in a role that you love.

Everyone should be able to have a roof over their head and a place to call their home. But tonight, far too many will be sleeping rough on our streets, cold and vulnerable. Thousands more will be in temporary accommodation or sleeping on their friends’ or family’s sofa, unsure of what the future holds. Our work is a top priority for this government and so we are expanding to deliver new initiatives. If you want an exciting and motivating role, with the freedom and the opportunity to develop and deliver interventions that will make a real difference to thousands of lives then this is the job for you.  

The current four-person finance team is a central function in the Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Directorate. You will join us at an exciting time having just secured over £2bn of public spend over the next three years to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping. You will be at the heart of this, ensuring that this funding reaches the most vulnerable of our society.

Job description

 As an apprentice, around 20% of you time will be dedicated to your learning and development. This can include attending seminars by your qualification provider, workshops, shadowing colleagues, self-directed learning and completing assignments for your professional qualification. We expect you to be motivated, ambitious and committed to your own development. You’ll be keen to get to grips with financial systems and processes.

In your day-to-day role, you’ll be carrying our important tasks for the finance team including making payments of millions of pounds, tracking invoices, and ensuring the programme is audit compliant whilst deepening your wider understanding of finance within the Department. The team is responsible for securing funding from His Majesty’s Treasury at fiscal events, managing this efficiently in line with managing public money and paying this funding out to our delivery partners. You will work closely with project teams to support them in making payments on time and accurately. They’ll be opportunities to try new things, work with different teams and learn about how you can make a career both within the finance profession and the Civil Service.

There are opportunities to get involved in office life in either Edinburgh or London including taking on responsibility for organising team away days across the country, joining social groups and playing an active part in making Homelessness & Rough Sleeping a great place to work.    

You’ll get to meet our stakeholders across the country including leading national charities and local authorities with regular trips to meet homeless and rough sleeping services to compliment your development within the finance profession.

Civil Service recruitment uses the success profiles framework to assess applications. Please read through the descriptions of each behaviour at the executive officer level when submitting your application to ensure you are demonstrating the criteria on which your application will be assessed against.

The successful candidate will be encouraged to undertake a professional learning qualification as part of the role through either the Level 3 Assistant Accountant (England) or Level 5 Foundation Certificate in Accounting (Scotland), if this is in line with both business needs and the individual’s development needs. This is not a mandatory condition of accepting the role. 

Person specification

Essential

·         Enjoys working as part of a team

·         A self-starter who has a can-do attitude and willingness to learn

·         Enjoys working with numbers

·         Confident using Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Office Suite

·         Organised and able to keep on top of multiple tasks at once

·         Looking to start a career in finance

·         Has already or be willing to work towards an appropriate professional finance qualification once in post paid for and supported by the Department (20% of your time will be dedicated to this). The specific qualification and level is dependent on eligibility and entry requirements for the course. Examples of qualifications you could work towards include AAT, CIMA, ACCA etc.  

If you have any questions about the role or application process, please contact the vacancy manager.

If successful in the role a suitable start date will be arranged. This will likely be from June/July 2023 onwards.

Benefits

• Learning and development tailored to your role

• An environment with flexible working options

• A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity

• A Civil Service pension with an average employer contribution of 27%

Things you need to know

Selection process details

We are for everyone 

At DLUHC we value diversity and inclusion and actively encourage and welcome applications from everyone, including those that are underrepresented in our workforce. We promote equality of opportunity in all aspects of employment and a working environment free from discrimination, harassment, bullying and victimisation. 

We would strongly recommend that applicants get in touch with the vacancy manager to find out more information about this role. 

We are for everyone 

DLUHC want to bring in and bring on a diverse workforce at all levels.  

Our application system is designed to remove as much bias as possible from the recruitment system – this means that a hiring manager does not know your name, your details, see your whole application in one go (or have your CV at review stage unless stated otherwise).  

Your answers are randomised and chunked up. This means that each assessor views sets of responses to questions for example all candidates’ responses to ‘Seeing the Big Picture’ rather than seeing a candidate’s full application. The science behind this is that recruitment can be subject to ordering and fatigue effects and we want to reduce this as much as possible.  

Most of our campaigns utilise multiple assessors and so it is possible that each of your answers would be viewed by different assessors. 

When writing your application, remember: 

• that the assessor won’t be reading your answers sequentially.  

• do not assume that the same assessors will have read all of your answers.  

If talking about something in your first answer, make sure that write the second answer as if you had not written the first (and so on!) 

At sift, we will be assessing: 

Experience - Why do you want to work in finance in Government? 

Behaviour 1 -  Changing and improving - Can you tell me about a time when you suggested a new idea or change to improve something?

Behaviour 2 - Working Together - Can you tell me about a time when you worked with others to deliver something? 

There is a 250 word limit per question. 

In the event that we receive a large number of applications, we may conduct an initial sift using the lead behaviour listed in the advert. Candidates who pass the initial sift may be progressed to a full sift, or progressed straight to assessment/interview. 

The interview will be of a blended nature consisting of behaviour, experience, ability and strength based questions as listed in the advert. The strength based questions will require natural responses from the candidates. Candidates who pass the sift will be invited to complete a short exercise prior to interview, details of which will be sent on invitation to interview. 

In the full campaign we will test the below Success Profile Elements: 

Behaviours: Changing and improving,  Working Together

Experience: At sift as above and at interview.

Ability: Yes through an exercise at interview stage

Strength: Yes

How to apply: 

Step 1- Complete your personal details on CS Jobs 

Step 2 - Complete the Verbal Reasoning test by 23:55 pm on 06/04/2023. When you are invited to complete the online tests you will be given access to guidance. It is strongly recommended that you read this guidance before you proceed. These tests are not timed; however, it is advised that you allow for up to an hour for completion of each test. 

Step 3 - If successful, we will send you a link to complete your application by providing your behaviour and experience examples on Be Applied by 23:55 pm on 12/04/2023. Please note these links are not automated and so may take a couple of days to come through and may be delivered to your junk or spam folders. 

Step 4 - We will sift your application and if successful, we will invite you to attend interview.  

We do not consider direct CV applications – you must apply for this role via the application link on Civil Service Jobs. 

Please note that near miss offers may be made at the lower grade to candidates who do not meet the grade criteria for this campaign  

EO salary 

• The salary for this role is £28,412 (London) or £25,324 (National). 

• For existing civil servants, the usual policy on level transfer and promotion will apply and is non-negotiable. 

• Eligible candidates may be entitled to an accountancy pay scale or accountancy payments on successful completion of a relevant qualification. In order to receive this, you must be suitably qualified and in a qualifying post as agreed by the Head of Profession.

BENEFITS:

Transfers across the Civil Service on or after 4 October 2018: Any move to DLUHC from another employer will mean you can no longer access childcare vouchers. This includes moves between government departments. You may however be eligible for other government schemes, including Tax-Free Childcare. Determine your eligibility at https://www.childcarechoices.gov.uk 

For further information about the benefits available to DLUHC employees, please see the attached Candidate Pack. 

GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION: 

• London 

• Edinburgh

There may be opportunities for candidates to work flexibly depending on the business needs. This will be discussed with the vacancy manager on a case-by-case basis if you are successful for the role. 

SIFT AND INTERVIEW DATES: 

Sifting is envisaged to take place from 11/04/2023 with interview dates to be confirmed. All interviews are currently being held remotely via videocall. 

RESERVE LIST: 

In the event that we identify more appointable candidates than we currently have posts available, we will hold applicant details on a reserve list for a period of 6 months from which further appointments can be made. This may include roles at a lower grade. Candidates placed on a reserve list will be informed of this. Due to the length of time CTC checks can take, our HR Shared Services team will contact reserve list candidates for London based roles to commence CTC checks. Those candidates who do not wish to remain on the reserve list should contact recruitment@communities.gov.uk to be removed from the reserve list. 

CTC (Counter-terrorism Clearance): 

Important note 

 
Successful candidates for roles based in our 2 Marsham Street building must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is counter-terrorist check and the process can take up to 8 weeks to complete. 
 
Please note that successful candidates will need to pass the CTC security checks – this requires you to have been resident in the UK for the past 3 years. Please refer to the DLUHC Notes on Security Clearance section of our Candidate Pack for further information on Counter Terrorism Clearance (CTC). Thank you. 
 
Candidates should also note that with effect from 1st August 2018 the department will also check all applicants who are successful at interview, against the Internal Fraud Database (IFD) held by the Cabinet Office. In accordance with the Civil Service Internal Fraud Policy, any applicant who is included on the IFD will be refused employment by DLUHC. Please see the Candidate Pack for further information on the Internal Fraud Database. 

TERMS & CONDITIONS STATEMENT: 

• Please note that existing DLUHC staff currently within their probation period would still need to complete their probation should they be successful for the role.

Before starting your application it’s very important to make sure that you are eligible to apply and meet the Civil Service nationality requirements. All candidates are expected to read the information provided in the DLUHC candidate pack regarding nationality requirements and rules 

Candidate Pack Information 

Please see attached Candidate pack for further information. 

Internal Fraud Database 

The Internal Fraud function of the Fraud, Error, Debt and Grants Function at the Cabinet Office processes details of civil servants who have been dismissed for committing internal fraud, or who would have been dismissed had they not resigned.The Cabinet Office receives the details from participating government organisations of civil servants who have been dismissed, or who would have been dismissed had they not resigned, for internal fraud. In instances such as this, civil servants are then banned for 5 years from further employment in the civil service. The Cabinet Office then processes this data and discloses a limited dataset back to DLUHC as a participating government organisations. DLUHC then carry out the pre employment checks so as to detect instances where known fraudsters are attempting to reapply for roles in the civil service. In this way, the policy is ensured and the repetition of internal fraud is prevented.  

For more information please see - Internal Fraud Register 

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check.

Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is counter-terrorist check (opens in a new window).

See our vetting charter (opens in a new window).

People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Nationality requirements

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

• UK nationals

• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK

• nationals of the Republic of Ireland

• nationals from the EU, EEA or Switzerland with settled or pre-settled status or who apply for either status by the deadline of the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)

• relevant EU, EEA, Swiss or Turkish nationals working in the Civil Service

• relevant EU, EEA, Swiss or Turkish nationals who have built up the right to work in the Civil Service

• certain family members of the relevant EU, EEA, Swiss or Turkish nationals

Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.

We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window).

The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.

The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy.