Written by Mason Quah, Marketing Assistant
The Civil Service College is launching a new series of in-depth discussion streams looking at a variety of topics relevant to the Service. These interviews are led by expert perspectives from a variety of different positions within the civil service, offering a diversity of views that can be informative regardless of experience and seniority.
This series kicks off by speaking to Civil Servant Nathan White on his newly published guide "entering the labyrinth" detailing how to secure a job in the civil service and the tools that have allowed him to flourish.
One of the structures that helped Nathan the most was the informal networks dedicated to helping people like him to advance.
“In the Department for Education there is the Black and Minority Ethnic Network, which is really good. They do sessions on how to apply for things, how to get to senior civil servant and talk about mentoring.”
Mentorship played an instrumental role for Nathan in his civil service journey and he argues for more formal structures that incorporate mentoring in the civil service.
“There's one black male who is a senior civil servant in my area and until I had a conversation with him and he said ‘do you want to become a senior civil servant one day’ that thought never crossed my mind."
“Subconsciously, I didn’t think it was possible.”
His goal in writing a guidebook was to share the help he had been given with people who didn’t have similar connections.
“The people asking us for help are lucky that they have us but there are thousands and thousands of people who want to get into service who don't have that. So we’re like, ‘right, lets do something for that.’”
Nathan’s account echoed the testimonies of many civil servants in the live chat, who offered their own journeys learning how to pursue mentorships and build strong networks.
Our next episode of "In conversation with" will be with the former chief people officer for the Home Office
Paula Leach, who will be speaking on the topic of human leadership: How to weave your team members together to leverage their unique strengths as individuals and cover for each other’s weaknesses. Details on how to join the live conversation will be on our website.
Nathan White's guide, "Entering the Labyrinth" is an unofficial publication that reflects the personal views of him and his co-author, Joe Oakes. A digital copy of it can be found here
The full interview with Nathan White can be viewed on the CSC youtube channel.
