HMRC withdraws from Civil Service graduate recruitment scheme
Over the years many ARC members have been involved in HMRC’s graduate recruitment scheme, predominately as assessors and/or centre managers.
Until this year, the scheme has always been run internally by HMRC, and very successful it has been. This was, however, contrary to policy in the rest of the Civil Service where recruitment is dealt with centrally through the Civil Service Fast Stream. This year, the apparent anomaly was identified and as a result a decision was taken to end the internal HMRC scheme and to use the Civil Service wide scheme as the source of graduates for the HMRC Graduate Scheme.
For most, this decision was unwelcome news and warnings were flagged about the potential problems. But ultimately the decision was upheld.
Over several months it became apparent, as had been flagged up at the time the decision was taken, that this had come at a cost. That cost has increased to the point that it was not financially viable. In addition, Fast Stream could not provide:
- ATSP
- Internship programme
- HMRC branding
- Pipeline for recruitment to other grades (from near miss candidates for TSP)
So HMRC has now withdrawn from the Civil Service Fast Stream and will run its own graduate recruitment for 2017, and the position for future years will be reviewed. This decision will no doubt be welcomed by all those who have been involved over past years.
Centre managers and assessors should expect to hear something in the next few weeks.
Photo: Luftphilia/flickr.com/CC 2.0