JOB SUMMARY

Civil Service Jobs is used by over 3 million candidates per month to view and find vacancies across the Civil Service. Each year it handles over 2 million applications and advertises 140,000 posts. The live service is used by 219 organisations to advertise their vacancies, with more joining and manage their recruitment processes. Currently, Civil Service Jobs is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) provision that has been configured and enhanced to meet Civil Service recruitment, digital and security standards.
You will join our programme focusing on the design of the new platform that will transform Civil Service Jobs, and help to improve the experience of our users. We’ve completed our Discovery and Alpha phases, where we did extensive user research and prototype design, to explore our user needs and potential solutions for the biggest areas of improvement.
We’ve decided that our service needs to procure rather than building our own, so we’ve now moved into the Beta procurement phase, which will see the commencement of the new contract during summer 2024, followed by a build and migration phase for all 219 departments to be completed by the end of 2026.
Cabinet Office Digital aspires to make UK Government digital services the best in the world, meeting or exceeding the benchmark set globally by the best public or private sector standards. We are creating a digital culture where user needs are at the heart of everything we build. Through data democratisation, automation, governance and consolidation we will create a better Cabinet Office.
As the digital arm of the department, we advise, assure or manage delivery on behalf of our colleagues in the Government People Group in developing their own Government Digital and Data capabilities. This is an exciting opportunity to join CO Digital, to lead on business improvements and otherwise support the Cabinet Office in delivering on the country’s priorities at the heart of the UK Government.
Civil Service Jobs enables the whole of government to recruit people more efficiently, without which the government could not deliver its work: hence our service brings far-reaching benefits for all citizens who will impacted by this change. We enjoy enabling people to find meaningful jobs, and teams to find great colleagues - contributing to a diverse culture that reflects the diversity in the UK.

JOB DESCRIPTION

We are looking for a Content Designer to join the Civil Service Jobs ATS Transformation programme in Cabinet Office Digital; you will directly contribute in improving our Civil Service Jobs platform with our customers, the wider recruitment service and those who are applying for roles in the Civil Service.
As a Content Designer, you will be an experienced practitioner who is capable of understanding our user needs, and creating user-centred content and designs that will make our user experience simpler and more intuitive. You’ll be a team player and care deeply about users and improving their experience. You will also take initiative to engage with stakeholders and communicate your design decisions on a regular basis. You will be comfortable in working in a fast-paced and changing .
Our team: You will work closely with the multidisciplinary programme team which includes the Digital Product and Delivery team (Senior Product Manager, Delivery Managers, Business Analysts, User Researchers, User-centred Designers, QA Testers etc) and the Supplier product team.
In delivering recruitment transformation, our programme will procure and build a new version of our recruitment platform by 2026, which will enhance the recruitment service provision across government.
This is an exciting role for someone who is passionate about user centred design and is looking to apply their experience and skills in a large programme of work impacting the whole Civil Service.

ESSENTIAL SKILLS

The required skills as detailed in the Content Designer capability, at Content Designer or Senior Content Designer level, and in particular:

• User-centred content design. You can lead the design of content to meet user needs and make complex language and processes easy to understand. You can present the right information in the right format for what users need. You are aware of government accessibility requirements and can design content that works with common assistive technologies;
• User focus (content design). You understand the range of different users who might access content and services and can identify their needs based on evidence. You can translate user stories into content that meets users’ needs and propose suitable design approaches;
• Agile working (content design). You can work with and understand agile methodology and can apply an agile mindset to your work. You are comfortable with the use of Agile in a fast-paced and changing work environment;
• Content concepts and prototyping. You can choose the best option to make content understandable to different audiences and demonstrate a proposed approach to content changes or improvements. You can build and create a variety of different prototypes, from paper sketches to coded prototypes;
• Stakeholder relationship management (content design). You can identify important stakeholders and communicate with them clearly and regularly. You can tailor communication to their needs and work with them to build relationships while also meeting user needs;
• Strategic thinking (content design). You can contribute to content strategies and policies, and can help create content patterns or standards.

TECHNICAL SKILLS

We’ll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:

• User-centred content design
• Content concepts and prototyping
• Stakeholder relationship management (content design)

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)
• 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

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Assist with the development of the content strategy and information architecture for Civil Service Jobs;
• Create, user-centred and concise content that can be understood by any member of the public;
• Work with policy colleagues to understand, articulate and challenge policies so they are understood by end-users and citizens;
• Identify and build strong relationships with stakeholders across the recruitment space, influencing and collaborating with them to improve content quality;
• Work with colleagues to use analytics data, user feedback and user research to identify the needs of users, map user journeys and inform content strategy and design;
• Use your content design expertise to review and provide feedback to other content designers on their work, as well as advise other disciplines on content design best practice;
• Contribute to the management of relationships between your team and other teams across government to ensure consistency and share good practice;
• Contribute to guidance for government, including content principles and patterns;
• Contribute to the cross-government and GPG design community;
• Help colleagues and stakeholders from other disciplines understand what content design is, why it’s important and how to work with content designers.