About the job

Job summary

Are you a highly resilient individual who can confidently challenge and communicate with people at all levels?  

Can you provide innovative and creative recruitment solutions whilst working at pace and to tight deadlines?

Would you like the opportunity to build and maintain relationships with people across our department at a variety of levels?

If so, we have an exciting opportunity for you to join Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) as a Resourcing Partner, and we’d love to hear from you!

The People Capability & Change (PC&C) Directorate provides direction, drives change and delivers the Department’s resourcing priorities.

You will play a pivotal role in leading the Resourcing Hub to effectively resource MHCLG with the right people with the right skills. This means a real focus on customer service and attention to detail, ensuring that we provide high quality resourcing advice and consultancy support. You will be a dedicated Resourcing Partner for one of our business areas providing bespoke recruitment advice on the design and delivery of campaigns. This role requires the ability to build credible and trusted relationships with hiring managers and senior leaders across MHCLG.

There may also be an opportunity to work within our innovative and exciting Digital team to provide bespoke support on the Recruitment of Digital Professionals.

Job description

Responsibilities include but are not limited to:

As part of your role, you will be required to undertake the following responsibilities:

• Provide bespoke recruitment or transactional consultancy support to your business area. You will be required to work with senior leaders, HR Business Partners and Business Managers to understand workforce plans and support them to develop strategies tailored to meet their needs.

• Build strong and credible partnerships with stakeholders both internally and externally, from a diverse range of backgrounds, sharing recruitment expertise, resources, and support. You will be expected to report updates on recruitment progress in Senior Leadership Team meetings with senior colleagues.

• Continuously look for ways of improving MHCLG's recruitment process – working to remove bureaucracy and utilise technology to streamline processes. Adopt an outward and forward-thinking approach, with a high aptitude for creativity and problem solving. You should encourage a solutions focused culture and have a strong awareness of innovative trials and how they might be applicable to the Department and wider Civil Service.

• Take the lead on data reporting. You will analyse and monitor recruitment data to enable the HR Operations team to keep track of progress against our workforce projections, key performance indicators and delivery of services. This requires a real eye for detail and an aptitude for analysis.

• Build and continuously expand upon your knowledge on the Civil Service Recruitment Principles, employment law, and IR35 legislation. You will use your skills and knowledge the build the capability of the team and managers across the wider Department.

• Support business areas through the contingent labour process. You will be required to understand labour market trends and costs, ensuring MHCLG receives good value for money.

• You will lead thematic projects and support HR priorities.

• Some line and/or task management may be involved.

Person specification

About you

The successful candidate will have experience of working in an operational environment and owning the end-to-end recruitment process, from attraction to candidate selection and will have the passion to succeed in this role.

You will bring excellent communication skills, both verbal and written, and will have the ability to adapt your delivery to suit a wide variety of audiences, maximising both impact and understanding.

You will have a talent for building rapport with others, which helps you build and maintain trusting and long-lasting relationships with your colleagues and stakeholders.

You will be self-motivated and bring a proactive and positive attitude, which gives you the ability to work on your own initiative and under pressure.

Your strong organisational skills give you a calm and composed approach to your work, and you thrive working in a fast-paced environment whilst working to deliver to deadlines. You are able to flex to meet conflicting priorities and demands, showing resilience and composure.

You enjoy looking for better ways of working and your ability to identify improvements and inspire change will be vital to add value to the expert advice and recommendations MHCLG provide to our customers.

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £32,178, Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities contributes £8,688 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

Things you need to know

Selection process details

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours, Strengths and Experience.

How to Apply

Application (sift) process:

At application stage we will be assessing your experience through three questions, there is a 250-word limit per questions. Please utilise the wordcount for your answers. We are looking to understand:

• When you have made a key recruitment decision based on a wide range of evidence or data.

• Your experience of delivering a high quality recruitment campaign that met your customers' needs.

• Your experience of influencing challenging stakeholders to come around to your way of thinking.

You will also be required to upload a CV as part of the application process. Please remove any personal information that could be used to identify you.

The sift is due to be completed w/c 5th August 2024.

Interview stage:

As part of the interview process, we will ask you a mixture of Strengths, Behaviour and Experience questions.

You will also be asked to carry out an assessment, which we will send to you in advance of the interview to prepare for.

Interviews are due to take place w/c 12th August.

We will try to meet the dates set out in the advert. There may be occasions when these dates will change. You will be provided with sufficient notice of the confirmed dates.

We do not consider direct CV applications to our Recruitment mailbox – 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. 

Pre-employment checks 

As part of our pre-employment checking process, we will be using your CV to confirm your job history. Please note that by providing us with your CV you are consenting to us using the information enclosed as part of the checking process. Unless stated otherwise in the advert, your CV will not form part of the assessment but will be used for information purposes and only shared with the panel at interview stage. 

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 panel members and so it is possible that each of your answers would be viewed by different assessors. 

When writing your application, remember: 

• The assessor will not 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 you write the second answer as if you had not written the first (and so on!)   

Reasonable Adjustments 

We are committed to ensuring that the recruitment process is fair, accessible and allows all candidates to perform at their best. If a person with a visible or non-visible disability is substantially disadvantaged, we have a duty to make reasonable changes to our processes. 

To inform us what changes or help you may need during the recruitment process, please complete the question within your application form. 

If you are experiencing accessibility problems with any attachments on this advert, please contact the email address in the 'Contact point for applicants' section. 

Pay 

For existing civil servants, the usual policy on level transfer and promotion will apply and is non-negotiable. If you apply for a role that requires a transfer of location, for example if you are transferring from London to a National location, your salary will be adjusted in accordance with our policy on transfer between HQ pay ranges.   

Please note that the average employer pension contribution is based upon the National minimum salary for this role. Should your agreed starting salary for this role be different, the average employer pension contribution will be calculated accordingly. If you are a Secondee, this will not apply as you will remain on your home organisation’s terms and conditions.     

Location 

• Birkenhead

• Wolverhampton 

• Darlington*   

The role will be based in the office location(s) listed above. You will be asked to express a location preference during the application process based on these and any offer made will be based on that specific location.

Successful applicants will be expected to attend this location in line with MHCLG office attendance requirements which, at present, is a minimum of 60% office attendance. MHCLG reserves the right to review and amend office attendance requirements.

Requirements to attend other office locations or off-site meetings will be counted towards this. Please be aware that this role can only be worked in the UK and not overseas.

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. 

*Please note: The Darlington Economic Campus (DEC) is a pioneering new cross-government hub which will bring together people across departments and public organisations to play an active role in the most important economic issues of the day. The work of the Campus will make a real difference to people both across the UK and internationally. There will be substantial career opportunities and exciting prospects - a career at the Campus means you will be working at the heart of Government, with access to the benefits and fantastic opportunities offered by the civil service.  

For further information on the DEC, please visit the attached DEC candidate pack.   

Reserve List 

In the event that we identify more appointable candidates than we currently have posts available, we will hold applicant details in 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. Those candidates who do not wish to remain on the reserve list should contact recruitment@levellingup.gov.uk to be removed from the reserve list.   

Candidate Pack Information 

Please see attached Candidate pack for further information. 

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 MHCLG candidate pack regarding nationality requirements and rules 

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 MHCLG as a participating government organisation. MHCLG then carry out the pre-employment checks 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   

Fixed Term Details 

For external candidates: you will be offered a 1 year fixed term appointment with a possibility of permanency.  

For existing civil servants – you will be offered a 1 year loan opportunity. Before applying for the role, you will need to seek approval from your parent department to take up a loan appointment should you be successful. 

For Secondments - you will be offered a 1 year secondment opportunity. Before applying for the role, you will need to seek approval from your employer to take up a secondment opportunity should you be successful. 

For MHCLG employees - you will retain your existing contract.  

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

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check. 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 the Republic of Ireland
• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
• Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

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.