Civil/Public Service Pay Scale Late Entrants

Such is the dilemma of the public service. You are trading security against risk, and mobility. Including upward mobility.
You can't get people in a lower wages unless you offer security and potential future earning.

You break that model if you parachute people at higher wages in skipping those who have made that trade off.
If you do that you won't be able to hire people at the lower wages, or retain them, or have any credibility in the security.

At which point you might as well privatize it, which has its own problems.

torblednam said:

If an organisation is running a competition for HEOs and panels dozens of people, they'll be happy to just offer it to the next person down the list, if the first person says they won't start at the bottom of the scale. That's just the way the civil service works. They run a merit / competency based competition, and from their perspective it'd make no sense to appoint person number 1 at 47k, and so on down the list until number 10 says "I'm a big shot and I'm not taking a drop in money to slum it with you guys" and they get to start on 53k...

There is a degree of flexibility when a single specific position is being recruited for, and in order to fill the position it's considered that it may be necessary to take someone in above the bottom of the scale.

Click to expand...

I agree with the above. When most of the Panels (PO, AP, HEP, EO etc.) are created these days it is normal to have ~200 people qualified, ordered and waiting on the panel. From a Public\Civil sector point of view, all 200 can do the jobs advertised so there is no negotiation, you are offered a job and you either accept it or don't. If you don't accept it, for whatever reason - it could be that you don't like that Department or location, you usually will get a second offer and then you are removed from the list. From the organisation point of view, you do not get to interview the candidates or pick between them, you get the next candidate on the list as they are all qualified..

For specific jobs, where they do not have a panel, I have seen candidates ask for an incremental assessment and sometimes there can be some latitude. However, even with those, they are very specific and rules based and you need to have met every single criteria. I haven't heard of any for some time now so they could even be finished with. We find it easy to get good candidates these days so starting people at point one on the scale is normal.