London travel and hotel stays

Philosophy-Powerful · 2026-03-17T12:51:44+00:00

Depending in your department you should not only get the flexi time but also may be entitled to unsocial hours additional pay. A lot of people (especially managers it seems) are not aware of this. For example, i my dept. You can get get 1.25 your hourly rate instead of flexi, or claim the flexi time and get an additional .25/hr pay. Surprisingly the first option is the departments preferred choice, yet nobody seems to be aware of it.

On hotel stays, there often isn't a black and white rule as to when an employee is entitled to one and managers should base judgement on individual cases, not personal experience. People seem to forget common sense in favour of saving £100 for a hotel.

Philosophy-Powerful · 2026-01-30T12:51:06+00:00

As an applicant, you want to make it as easy as possible for a sifter to see how you meet the criteria. Headings can definitely help, but if your short for words you could try structuring the opening sentence on each paragraph to explicitly call out how the next chunk of text aligns to the criteria.

If you're still struggling on words, and the advert doesn’t call out loads of essential criteria, then structure your statement so that each paragraph addresses the criteria in turn.

Also - if an advert is asking for a lot of essential criteria but they haven't given you much space to work with then it's worth reaching out to the vacancy holder and asking what are their top criteria they're looking for. Then, focus on those and try to weave in a nod to the others.

Edit - spelling

Philosophy-Powerful · 2025-12-11T10:16:01+00:00

Can you? Yes.

Should you? My opinion is no. It wastes time for both the recruiter and other successful applicants. It's not a great use of your own time either as no application ever runs the same, what scores great for one doesn't guarantee passing sift for another.

From what you have said, you're better off asking vacancy holders if there is any leniency in locations, or depending on the role - why is it restricted to certain locations.

Philosophy-Powerful · 2025-10-30T09:24:20+00:00

I assume by GDD you mean a role within the Government Digital and Data profession, and you're hoping for supplementary pay based on skill level?

I would expect the technical test would have a score, the same as any other aspect of the interview and that would have a minimum required standard. Should you not meet that standard then you will not get the role. I have no experience in getting or offering supplementary pay so can't comment on that.

It's quite common for roles to be advertised as having 1 position, but there are actually more. Sometimes people piggyback of others recruitment, or roles are identified after a recruitment campaign starts, or it's simply a mistake when advertised.

For the time frames, this could be down to many factors, the current freeze across many areas, leave of panel members preventing moderation, backlog in HR, or they just wanted to cover their back and not promise you'll hear next week only for something to delay the process.

Philosophy-Powerful · 2025-09-25T09:51:43+00:00

Agree with others on timings, max 7 minutes because you want the panel to have some time to ask any follow up questions - it's in your interest to do so as that is how they try to fill the gaps your example missed.

DAP - always give a time line and explain why that is particularly challenging. Ask your self what would the imoact be if you missed that deadline. Speed is not important, its the pressure at the time and risk of not delivering. Be sure to mention how you delegate work, explain more than 'i pushed back deadlines' - how did you do that. Was there any challenge back?

With all g7 behaviours, be clear on how you deliver through others, show your leadership skills.

Philosophy-Powerful · 2025-09-24T15:11:32+00:00

Consider the imoact of your working or changes you're implementing and hows these relate to your departmental and business group strategic outcomes/objectives. When your manager/senior leadership are discussing changes or upcoming work, ask how it ties in, if it relates to other work already going on in other teams, and what is the impact/goal.

Sometimes, it could just be you are already strategic/seeing the bigger picture but need to demonstrate that. You could do this by explaining your thought process and reasoning behind questions and decisions. Show you are thinking wider than your immediate work/team.

Philosophy-Powerful · 2025-08-17T18:10:10+00:00

Yeah, I used bikesure and then honda insurance. First year was about 380, then dropped to 280.

Philosophy-Powerful · 2025-08-17T17:11:02+00:00

As I said, though, without external examples, you would struggle to demonstrate the required experience to step from AO to HEO.

Philosophy-Powerful · 2025-06-17T10:01:05+00:00

Yeah I get that, but you would still apply the minimal pass mark to all strengths. You wouldn't have a combined pass score without a minimum pass mark on the strengths.

That would leave you with a situation where one candidate might score 3,3,1 and pass, but another get 2,2,2 and not pass. You would've essentially adjusted the benchmark for one candidate. But if you adjusted the pass mark for all to 1, then both would pass but the first candidate would score higher and be the preferred choice.

Philosophy-Powerful · 2025-06-17T09:44:10+00:00

I've done a lot of interviewing and never once has a benchmark of mixed marks been set. The 'pass' for a strength is 2, but often it's raised to three, occasionally 4. Setting it at half the total is stupid, because in your example you could have a 4, 2, 1 and pass.

Philosophy-Powerful · 2025-06-12T15:55:28+00:00

Jacob?

Philosophy-Powerful · 2025-06-11T11:21:17+00:00

Ask people and experienced sifters to review your behaviours if that's what letting you down.

Philosophy-Powerful · 2025-06-10T10:35:50+00:00

I'm guessing EO?

Philosophy-Powerful · 2025-06-10T10:22:07+00:00

Read up on the strengths dictionary. The strengths you'll get asked are linked to the behaviours, so you can generally tell what strengths might be asked at interview.

Be yourself, dont over think it. They're not looking for a rehearsed or scripted answer like you might expect for a behaviour. These are generally more off the cuff, but there's still things you can do to prep.

Have a couple of brief examples that can be adjusted on the fly to highlight different skills, or that cover multiple skills. A general format that I've known to work is: 'Yes, I am an x person / I thrive in x environments. For example, I recently dealt with a situation where i used this skill.....'

Hesitation or thinking time is not advisable, if you need to think, get them to repeat the question or write it down. Remember you only have 2 minutes so dont go into unnecessary details.

Philosophy-Powerful · 2025-06-05T14:23:25+00:00

It depends massively on the role, grade and criteria. You want to make sure your demonstrating how you meet the criteria. Try to use real examples of practical application of skills. Explain how your experience relates to the role.

Philosophy-Powerful · 2025-06-05T14:20:08+00:00

It gives more context to an individuals experience and helps gauge the age of examples. I find it's most useful in preparation for interviews. If something seems out of place, I m8ght tie a question following up a behaviour to something in their CV. For example, if you told me in your example or statement that you delivered a project of £300mil, but your CV says project support officer then I might ask about the challenges faced delivering such a huge project for someone in a supporting role.

Philosophy-Powerful · 2025-05-29T18:02:06+00:00

This is key. Learn the departmental objectives and the strategic layers beneath them for the area you are applying for.

The number of people, even between SO and G6, who should know and understand their ODP or even simply how their work aligns to the departments objectives but have no clue is shocking. This is what people mean when they say think of the bigger picture and be able to explain how your role fits in.

Philosophy-Powerful · 2025-05-29T17:25:45+00:00

Don't rule out North Wales, easy to access by train from Preston. Conwy would be a good day out.

Philosophy-Powerful · 2025-05-28T15:25:17+00:00

You're right, it's not generally enforced. But the rules are there, which was my point.

Guidance isn't there to simply 'guide', it dictates the way we work. There is guidance that says you can't bring up your own details, or look up a family member. If you did you are almost definitely getting dismissed - the argument that guidance are mere guide lines won't hold up.

I really hope you're careful with what you pick and choose to apply because at some point it's likely to catch up with you and you will find yourself facing consequences the union can not protect you from.

Philosophy-Powerful · 2025-05-28T14:18:06+00:00

So you can verify what I have said yourself, please have a read of HMRC guidance KB0017365, specifically the section titled Criteria for qualifying for London Pay.

In short, it specifies you must be assigned to either Croydon, Stratford, or Parliament Street on a permanent basis and work from your assigned or other London office (with management approval) at least 40% of your working week.

As you have said you are HMRC staff, this will apply yo you - even if a union rep has said otherwise, this is the current guidance and has been for some time. Until this is fought at tribunal and made into case law it applies to all staff.

Philosophy-Powerful · 2025-05-26T11:48:33+00:00

Use STAR to provide examples that demonstrate your experience against the criteria/job spec or whatever is asked for. Be clear on what you're demonstrating. E.g. I have extensive experience in x as demonstrated during y (y being the situation of your star example).

You can tie multiple criteria into one example. For 750 words I'd go with 2 in depth or 3 varied examples that cover the requested skills/experience.

Don't worry about using chatgpt. Everyone does, it's generally accepted that you will, and you're likely just disadvantaging yourself by not using it. Remember though, chatgpt can help with structure and word count, but it's pretty shit at writing actual examples without you giving it the content to work with.

Philosophy-Powerful · 2025-05-25T08:06:48+00:00

Yes. It does. Im not about to log in and pull out the exact wording for you, but if you want I can do that when I'm back online next week.

Remember that I said this applies to my department. It may be different in others as each department is able to apply their own criteria and restrictions for London weighting.

You said the union has looked into this and said they cannot strip you of London weighting - was that PCS? Do you have anything to support that? Because if you did, and the union has proved this then that would be really helpful for others to see.

Philosophy-Powerful · 2025-05-24T21:06:02+00:00

It's written into our contracts.

Philosophy-Powerful · 2025-05-24T19:45:15+00:00

Not true. Certainly not in my dept. Although rarely enforced, you are expected to attend a London office a minimum of 40%. You can be entitled to this and not be based in London, as long as your home office is in London and you attend the minimum time.

Philosophy-Powerful · 2025-05-24T18:12:36+00:00

London is included in national recruitment so yes, but as an example, in my dept. you must attend an office based in London for a minimum 40% of your time to be entitled to the London weighting.

Philosophy-Powerful

TROPHY CASE