BBC secondments

The Government Statistical Service (GSS) Emerging Talent team are pleased to offer 4 exciting opportunities for experienced analysts to work at the BBC for a three-month placement in 2024. The first placement will start in January.

The first 3 secondments of 2024 will be based at the headquarters of BBC News in London. We are now able to offer the fourth secondment of the year to take place from October 2024 at the BBC in Salford.

Successful applicants will be expected to travel and work at the BBC offices in London or Salford, depending on the secondment, but there may be scope to negotiate a hybrid working arrangement. Hybrid working arrangements would be subject to agreement with the Head of Statistics at the BBC, with the expectation of being in the office a minimum of 3 days a week.

The secondments would suit a Grade 7 or experienced Senior Executive Officer (SEO) from one of the analytical professions. Your salary for this professional development opportunity will continue to be paid by your parent department, and departments will not be able to claim salary re-imbursements from the BBC. This means applicants should have the approval of their line manager and divisional director before they apply.

Role and responsibilities

The successful applicants will work closely with the BBC’s Head of Statistics to fact check, provide figures and briefings, and ensure the robust and accurate use of statistics in any BBC outputs across a range of topics. They will do this specifically through:

• advising on the interpretation and presentation of statistical claims in surveys, press releases, and news stories
• helping journalists find the right data source and come to conclusions supported by the evidence when working with official statistics
• conducting ad hoc statistical analyses of data for new stories with the statistics and data journalism teams
• promoting good statistics and statistical thinking to journalists

Person specification

The successful applicants will have:

• strong communication skills with the ability to provide advice and share knowledge with customers and colleagues
• the ability to influence decision making, working with credibility and proactively with customers to share knowledge and information
• experience of forming effective relationships with stakeholders and ability to utilise a wide network
• a broad and demonstrative understanding of official statistics and ability to look at the broader spectrum of data available
• the ability to develop and maintain reputation, building trust through quality assurance of work

Applying

All loans and secondment opportunities are offered based on current satisfactory performance. Applicants must have permission from their line manager to apply, as well as an endorsement of their application. They must also have approval for release to start their secondment in January 2024, in case they are allocated to the first cohort.

The successful candidates will be representing their department and the Government Statistical Service (GSS). This means they will be expected to adhere to their professional standards and the Civil Service code of objectivity and impartiality.

Please send a brief expression of interest to GSS.Careers@ons.gov.uk stating how you meet the requirements, as described in the person specification. Your expression of interest should be no longer than 1 side of A4 paper. Please also indicate which of the following periods you would like to be placed in:

• January to March 2024
• April to June 2024
• July to September 2024
• October to December 2024

Every effort will be taken to allocate you to your preferred period, but this cannot always be guaranteed. We will carry out a selection exercise based on the roles, responsibilities and person specification criteria.

The deadline for expressions of interest is Wednesday 11 October 2023.

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