My job hunting blog

Not a lot happened this week. I have still been trying to book an interview with the civil service - slots were only available once last Friday for 2 hours or less (i.e. by the time I had checked the portal after receiving a message that slots were available, they had all gone). I have been checking regularly since but no slots have become available. Extremely frustrating.

This last week I focused on Python learning and statistics. I read several chapters from one book and now have decided to use a different book instead. Regarding Python work, I watched several hours of content (plus researching and practising) from pluralsight during their free weekend offer.

I looked around for other jobs, but I have not identified any for which I can or wish to apply. I have not heard back from any other companies where I have active applications. On a personal level, I feel I have been extremely productive for the last 3 weeks, doing about 3-5 hours of productive work every day with the exception of two days.

I saw a earlier post saying you were rejected from the civil service, sorry if you explained it already i have missed a few posts

Area of development:

Specialist/Technical Knowledge 2
At the assessment centre, we would have liked to have seen stronger evidence of your specialist knowledge. Having a clearer picture of your understanding of the issues presented would have helped, alongside more detail on your approach to reviewing the information you had. We would also have liked to have seen more detail in your analysis, so we could better understand your thinking and logic when considering alternatives for dealing with the challenges faced. Having appropriate and jargon free information to share with the audience is important to us at BA, and we’d have liked to see more evidence of this.

It is for civil service stats 2021. I got rejected from civil service fast stream in 2020 and in 2019 I got rejected from civil service stats.

I don't think I will apply for BA. As well as I thought my interview went with them, I just didn't get a good vibe. They were not interested in learning about the statistics I had used so I am not sure how I would score higher. Here is what they wrote as my feedback for my one "area of weakness":



The bold bit is a bit of a joke to be honest. I had a figure printed on paper with me which outlined my algorithm pictorially. I've shown this figure in my thesis and also to colleagues and they understood it. At the interview, my interviewers were not interested in looking at the image and I instead had to describe an algorithm verbally which is obviously more difficult. ********s tbh. They needed to look at the picture because it is an algorithm used for image analysis - so its incredibly difficult to describe in words without the picture but super easy to describe with the picture.

The rest of the comment is probably about the exercise. I thought I did okay in it. They mention "understanding of the issues" but I remember citing the CEO and what he said the challenges were in response to some questions. So I don't really know precisely what they mean there. I guess they wanted deeper analysis, but with an engineering background and not finance/econmics/maths, I am not sure what I would be expected to know there. Oh well.

I also remember speaking to the grads. One girl said she had joined with no programming experience whatsoever. So it left me wondering what sort of deep analysis she had done during her degree where she wasn't required to do any programming - I guess spreadsheet work? It left me feeling that they focus on people who know how to do the analysis that they already use and have used them for their own projects. I felt that anyone like me with the capability to learn it is perhaps second to those people.

All in all, I got a bad vibe from them. I had a much better interview experience with Avanti West Coast who arranged a time to call me and gave me personal feedback for each question I answered during my face to face interview. This has helped me a lot more than any of my experience with BA.

So my interview for the stats role is this week. I haven't bothered job hunting for several weeks now - just tried to focus on learning basic statistics these last few weeks and also re-learning by previous analytical work. I did burn out a little this last week or so but I still remained somewhat productive. I also completed a video assessment for HS2 which by all accounts I thought went well but it has been over a week since I've last heard from them now. I haven't heard back from any other company.

Fingers crossed.

I applied to BA again, but I got a bad vibe last year and the year before, I know my chances of rejection will be high, I totally get that vibe you describe, and as for them hiring people with no programming experience makes me perplexed.

What you need programming experience even if your role is not relevant to it? Or is this specific to one role you're talking about?

admiring your strength to keep motivated after that rejection and keeping up. I would have had a week break


I have an ac for Kerry so I am taking ashganda to reduce nerves and anxiety. also be using a product called gorilla mind smooth for Lazer focus and concentration

I didn't get the job. I felt I answered the questions well but the feedback I got was misleading and some it lied as well, just outright lied. One of the things they were looking for was "leadership" and their feedback for that section was low - they focused solely on my answer to one question "describe a time you had to influence someone" rather than all my other answers to other questions. I thought that answer was fine for the question being asked - if they wanted a more specific leadership question they should have asked - I don't "second guess" what interviewers are supposed to be looking for - I try to answer the question and match the values of the company/organisation instead in all my answers if possible.

So what the civil service do is ask six questions with the intent on simply measuring six key traits for each one and ignoring all other traits. They may ask follow up questions for each one but still measuring the same trait. In other words, their only test for leadership was purely based on how I answered that one question, even though there were other questions during the interview such as "how would you engage with team members" which I answered extremely well and are obviously related to leadership as well. They seemed to ignore that answer and several other answers I gave completely.

All in all a bit of a joke. The lady interviewing me looked disinterested from the start as well. All in all, just a total waste of my time. I spent four to six weeks stopping all job applications and reading about statistics (which did help for some of the technical questions at least) only to fail more on the behavioural ones :/.

Anyway I am back to job hunting, I've had no response from the other companies. I am getting worried about HS2 now. I thought I did well for the video assessment but still no reply :/. I had a look for other jobs over the weekend - there isn't much. I also completed more of my python project - spending 8 hours working on it overnight . Can't wait to finish it.

Im getting worried too, just got rejected from centrica and thats after I nudged them about my application, i think they were not even ganna get back to me, this year with job applications has damaged my confidence, I hope its more to do with the pandemic rather than me not being employable. Im down to just three graduate schemes, In the mean time I aim to get some professional qualifications in the finance and accounting field, but i totally get these recruiter's /interviewers just simply dont give a ****. Have you heard from natwest or openreach?

What role did u apply to kpmg for? I applied for there financial modelling role in London

Im getting worried too, just got rejected from centrica and thats after I nudged them about my application, i think they were not even ganna get back to me, this year with job applications has damaged my confidence, I hope its more to do with the pandemic rather than me not being employable. Im down to just three graduate schemes, In the mean time I aim to get some professional qualifications in the finance and accounting field, but i totally get these recruiter's /interviewers just simply dont give a ****. Have you heard from natwest or openreach?