Joint Head - Special Situations London, England
Job description
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About the job
Job summary
About HM Treasury
If you’re interested in making a difference to people’s lives across the country, the Treasury is the department for you! We sit at the centre of everything that the Government does and have provided advice on economic policy and decisions that affect the public finances throughout the country’s history. A Treasury career continues to offer an exciting opportunity to be part of the decision making that affects the whole of the UK.
Working at the heart of government, we collaborate with other departments to ensure public money is spent well and to drive strong and sustainable economic growth. Our work ranges from protecting customers through to the regulation of the financial sector, helping to reduce carbon emissions and creating a greener economy, supporting people across the country through the COVID 19 furlough scheme and Plan for Jobs as well as helping first time buyers buy their first home.
HM Treasury is proud of a diverse and inclusive work environment, committed to fairness and the promotion of equality of opportunity for all. We know that having a range of experiences, ways of working and thinking makes us a stronger organisation, better at developing policy that is reflective of the communities we serve. We embrace different views and experiences and value the fresh perspective that people from a variety of circumstances bring to the work we do. We welcome applications from candidates who have not previously worked for the Civil Service, mid- and late-career changers with transferrable skills, people from all backgrounds and circumstances regardless of disability, gender, age ethnicity, LGBT+ identity and socio-economic status.
The Darlington Economic Campus is a pioneering new cross-government hub which will bring people together across departments and public organisations to play an active role in the most important issues of the day.
HM Treasury in Darlington will be joined by the Department for International Trade, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the Office for National Statistics, the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, the Competition and Markets Authority, the Department for Education and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.
Enterprise and Growth Unit
The Enterprise and Growth Unit (EGU) promotes sustainable economic growth and higher productivity for the UK. We provide analysis and advice on enterprise, innovation, private sector investment and a cost-effective transition to a low-carbon economy. The Enterprise and Growth Unit has a varied and exciting agenda and we work closely with a wide variety of other teams across the Treasury.
We also work alongside other departments and government organisations to ensure that we are thinking creatively, spending wisely and acting boldly to deliver these goals. These organisations are:
- the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy,
- the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs,
- the Department for Transport,
- the Department for International Trade,
- the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport, and
- the Competition and Markets Authority
Special Situations and Corporate and Sectors Analysis Team
We would like to recruit two people to the Special Situations and Corporate and Sectors Analysis team. This 19-person team is open and inclusive team of diverse people who support and develop one another. High-quality management and career development is important to us, and we are dedicated to building a talented cadre of people at every level in the team. Our objectives are an interesting mix of policy, analysis and delivery and the team is unique with its offer to staff looking to develop commercial and corporate finance expertise in a public policy environment. The team’s objectives are three-fold:
- Own the Business Engagement Process (BEP) across Whitehall-to triage, diligence, monitor, assess and agree commercial interventions for strategically important companies. We are the cross-government centre for high profile, sophisticated commercial casework and are simultaneously responsible for key policymaking around each intervention, including conditions for support related to climate change, tax transparency and corporate governance.
- Corporate Analysis and Sector Analysis (CASA)-Our analysis branch monitors UK corporate health, analysing debt and distress levels for different firm sizes and in different sectors. It is the central team working on corporate analysis in HMT and offers a unique opportunity to work on microeconomics. We work jointly with casework and policy leads as well as many analysts across HMT to understand the risks to corporate health and how those may affect specific firms. We have shaped HMT’s understanding of the sectoral impact of energy price shocks, Ukraine sanctions and tariffs and other pressures, and provide advice to Ministers on the overall health of the corporate sector, including insolvency rates.
- Business Energy-We coordinate HMT’s view of business energy support. In response to the energy crisis, this team brought together CASA’s analysis of sectoral impacts with an assessment of tax and spend options for business, co-ordinating across HMT. We lead the HMT-review of the recent business energy relief scheme for non-domestic consumers. And we continue to bring together the potential policy responses and communication handling – enabling a coherent monitoring and response function focused on pressures on business that breaks down sectoral silos across spending and tax teams.
Job description
Key Accountabilities
While experience in corporate finance is valuable, it is by no means required and we prioritise hiring people who are motivated, energetic, comfortable learning on the job and operating in uncertain, fast-moving environments.
Head of Special Situations Steel Casework branch (First post). You will have a team of five direct reports, working closely with the Business Department, UK Government Investments (private sector experts on restructuring and insolvency), the Cabinet Office and the Prime Minister’s office, to handle several high-profile steel cases simultaneously. This role balances specific company casework with longer-term strategic thinking about the steel sector’s transformation so it is a great fit for an experienced leader balancing real-world delivery challenges and long-term policy development.
Joint E2 Casework Head - You will also take on other company casework as part of a four-person E2 management team.
This includes making strategic judgements about companies that approach government; understanding complex commercial interventions; and handling cross government relationships, working particularly closely with UK Government Investments. You will need a strong ability to handle both breadth and depth: delegate effectively across cases based on strategic priority and political sensitivities, while keeping on top of the substance. You will also get to develop and hone several career-building skills unique to this role: including corporate finance training, complex insolvency practice and the government’s response to local area shocks.
Rapid induction and consistent support of more junior members of staff remotely is a large portion of this job and the team culture is very focussed on developing and expanding the skills of team members. We expect E2s to focus strongly on management and leadership to achieve this and create a culture of high standards as a leadership team.
This role briefs the Chancellor, political advisors, and No 10 on a weekly basis and therefore a strong understanding of effective communication with Ministers and political advisors is key.
Business Energy (Second post)-You will lead a team of five, focus on coordinating HMT’s position on the impact of energy prices on businesses and the various tools available to HMG to respond. As above, you will also get training in special situations casework and will be a critical member of the senior leadership team responsible for stepping into complex Special Situations casework.
The successful candidate will have ample experience working collaboratively across multiple teams to coordinate and understand what HMT and therefore the Government’s response to energy pressures should be for business. Focus on supporting your team to hone communication and in-depth policy thinking on business energy policy will be critical. This branch must have a diverse array of skills, including familiarity with analysis and government’s approach to assessing policy costs.
Person specification
If you have a strong preference for one of the two roles being advertised, please indicate this in your application.
Required Skills, Experience and Behaviours:
The successful candidate will have:
- Strong stakeholder management skills, with a clear track record of working confidently across teams and departments, and with external stakeholders, to build effective working relationships, provide thoughtful challenge, and deliver wider government or organisational objectives.
- Experience leading a team dealing with complex policy issues and delivering outcomes jointly with other departments or stakeholders, ensuring overarching objectives and strategies of projects are achieved
- The ability to make difficult judgements through assessing and synthesizing a range of evidence and analysis to provide senior decision-makers with recommendations.
- Highly developed leadership, with experience of delivering complex projects or policy through others while supporting them to develop new skills and contributing to a diverse team culture and senior management team.
Candidate Guidance on Completing your Application Form
- Experience - this will be assessed with a 1000-word statement covering all four criteria above criteria. You will give the answer in the personal statement section under “statement of suitability” using the below STAR method, and be given direct guidance at this stage on the experience we are looking for you to demonstrate
All elements of the success profiles will be linked to a defined criterion that demonstrates the behaviour, experience or technical skills. It is beneficial to ensure your answer focuses on the full criteria, and not just the related success profile, to give you the best chance or providing the evidence the panel wants to assess
In your statements, it is best to focus on one example per criteria to allow you to provide enough detail in your answer and use all the words you have been allocated We would also advise you to use examples that best meet the criteria, even if it is a few years old.
How to Structure your Answer
- Situation – Describe the situation you found yourself in and what happened.
- Task – The Hiring Manager will want to understand what you tried to achieve from the situation that you found yourself in.
- Action – What actions did you take and how did you do it. Make sure to use “I”, not “we” to explain how your actions lead to a result.
- Result – Use facts and statistics to demonstrate the results that your actions produced. Explain whether it was a successful outcome, and if not, what you learned from the experience.
- At HM Treasury, to maximise diversity and inclusion within our workforce, we operate a fair, open and anonymous recruitment process. This means that the sift panel will only be able to assess you on the written evidence supplied in your application answers. They will not have access to personal information.
- You may be asked to provide some CV details during your application; however these will NOT be assessed during the process, but will be used to support discussions at interview – please ensure you put all information you would like to be scored against in your behaviour, experience and technical skill statements
- You will be assessed on your skills, experience and behaviours through the online application form. When completing your application form, please outline how you meet the requirements as detailed in the ‘Essential Criteria ‘section of this job description. This will give you the best chance to provide the evidence that the panel wants to assess.
- If we receive a large number of applications, applications will be assessed initially against the lead criterion alone. You will then be assessed against the other criteria if you have met the minimum score on the first criterion.
- Find out more about how the Civil Service assesses candidates and uses Success Profiles (opens in a new window) to test skills, experience and behaviours in applications and interviews.
- Applications are not reviewed until the closing date has passed. You will be notified of the outcome of your application as soon as the recruitment panel has reviewed all the applications.
Support to Candidates
Candidate Drop-In Session
We will be running a candidate drop-in session for this role to give you greater insight about the role as well as the chance to learn more about HM Treasury and the recruitment process. If you would like to join us, then use the appropriate link below to join the call at the right time.
8th February 2:30pm
Click here to join the meeting
Behaviours
We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:
- Leadership
- Making Effective Decisions
- Seeing the Big Picture
- Delivering at Pace
Benefits
- 25 days’ annual leave (rising to 30 after 5 years), plus 8 public holidays and the King's birthday (unless you have a legacy arrangement as an existing Civil Servant)
- Flexible working patterns (part-time, job-share, condensed hours)
- A Civil Service Pension which provides an attractive pension, benefits for dependants and average employer contributions of 27%
- Onsite restaurant and coffee bar. The London office also offers a gym, showers and prayer room
- Access to a cycle-to-work salary sacrifice scheme, season ticket advances and payroll giving
- Access to a retail discounts and cashback site
- A Rental Deposit Advance Scheme to help meet the total costs of deposits for privately rented homes
- A range of active staff networks, based around interests (e.g. analysts, music society, sports and social club) and diversity (e.g. women in the Treasury, ethnic minority network, LGBT* network, faith and belief network)
Flexible working arrangements:
HM Treasury views flexible working as essential in enabling us to recruit and retain talented people, ensuring that they are able to enjoy a long-lasting career with us. All employees have the right to apply for flexible working and there are a range of options available including; working from home, compressed hours and job sharing. Additionally, we operate flexitime systems, allowing employees to take up to an additional 2 days off each month, providing you work enough hours to meet business need.
We also offer a generous parental and adoption leave package.
At HM Treasury we have an incredibly broad remit; our work touches every citizen of the country. So, it’s important our employees come from the widest possible range of backgrounds, bringing us the widest possible range of perspectives and ways of thinking. We are committed to ensuring that all staff are able to realise their potential and achieve a healthy work-life balance.
Things you need to know
Selection process details
As part of our pre-employment security checks, if you are invited to interview and are not a current HM Treasury member of staff, you will need to bring:
- Proof of identity, e.g. your passport or driver’s license. Documents must be in date and valid.
- Proof of address, e.g. a utility bill or bank statement issued within the past 3 months
- Proof of your National Insurance (NI) number, e.g. letter from DWP confirming your NI number, or P60
- If you do not bring a UK or EU passport, you will need to bring other documentation of your right to work in the UK, e.g. your visa, biometric residence permit or birth certificate.
- If your right to work is granted through the EU Settlement Scheme, alongside you proof of identity you will need to provide either a letter of application or status outcome letter from the Home Office. If you are successful in being appointed to the role you will also be required to provide a Right to Work Share Code
Further details regarding acceptable documents will be provided in the invitation to interview. If you cannot provide in the first instance, the above documentation required for employment checks, at interview, please contact [email protected], If you are offered the role, we will require all documentation, as this is part of the security vetting process. If you do not provide this at interview stage, this may slow down the process and delay your start date.
If your contact details change at any time during the selection process, please ensure you update your Civil Service Jobs Profile.
Eligibility Statement
Individuals appointed to the Treasury Group will be subject to National Security Vetting. To allow for meaningful checks to be carried out applicants will normally need to have lived in the UK for at least 3 out of the past 5 years. A lack of UK residency in itself is not always a bar to security clearance but the Department will need to consider eligibility on a case by case basis using all information that can be obtained following a successful application. You will be asked to provide information regarding your UK residency during your application, and failure to provide this will result in your application being rejected.
Everyone working with government assets must complete Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS) checks.
For many roles, security clearance is also required. Successful candidates must meet the security requirements of the role before they can be appointed. The level of security clearance required for this role is Security Check (SC)
Please read the Vetting Charter for information on what to expect during the vetting process and what will be expected from you.
Many areas of your life may be explored during your vetting journey, and it is important that every individual, regardless of their background and experiences, should feel comfortable going through this personal process, whilst having confidence that it is fair, proportionate, and inclusive.
These short videos address common concerns and preconceptions which applicants may have about national security vetting.
If you have questions relating to security clearances, please contact [email protected].
Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.
Security
See our vetting charter (opens in a new window).
Nationality requirements
This job is broadly open to the following groups:
- UK nationals
- nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
- nationals of the Republic of Ireland
- nationals from the EU, EEA or Switzerland with settled or pre-settled status or who apply for either status by the deadline of the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
- relevant EU, EEA, Swiss or Turkish nationals working in the Civil Service
- relevant EU, EEA, Swiss or Turkish nationals who have built up the right to work in the Civil Service
- certain family members of the relevant EU, EEA, Swiss or Turkish nationals
Working for the Civil Service
We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window).
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