Consular Officer

Job summary

The Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office pursues our national interests and projects the UK’s role in the world. We promote the interests of British citizens, safeguard the UK’s security, defend our values, reduce poverty and tackle global challenges with our international partners. We employ more than 17,000 staff in 179 countries and territories, across our diplomatic and development offices worldwide, which consists of 282 officially designated Posts. Our UK-based staff work in King Charles Street, London, Abercrombie House in East Kilbride and Hanslope Park in Milton Keynes.

Job description

The FCDO’s Consular Services Department provides British people with first class 24/7 consular services. The Consular Contact Centre (CCC) team is split between two locations: one in Abercrombie House, East Kilbride, and one in Malaga, Spain.
Together, we are the first point of contact for all our global consular customers, providing advice and support by phone and to written enquiries and digital services.

Roles and Responsibilities

The successful candidates will be responsible for:

• Customer Contact - including receiving calls and written enquiries, responding accordingly, and recording actions taken. You will deal with some distressed British nationals, as well as some difficult customers and those wishing to register complaints. In addition, there will be recording of MPs’ enquiries, providing signposting to other government departments and authorities, logging cases on our database and passing enquiries to Embassies/High Commissions around the global network, according to consular assistance guidance. You will be leading on all aspects of first contact, with a focus on customer service and consular assistance for British nationals.

• Resource Management - including call monitoring, and written enquiries. You will meet team and personal Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), to ensure the best possible customer service is always maintained. You should offer flexibility to assist with staff absences, assist with arrangements after an Embassy or Consulate closes, technical failures, crises and requests for staff language skills. You will respond to different channels of customer contact to ensure the best possible customer service and prepare and monitor data in relation to all KPIs.

• Customer Knowledge Management - including assisting the Team with enquiry data received, ensuring that all data is recorded accurately and anomalies are reported for action. You will be a key part of our customer knowledge management and quality control initiatives, helping to collate accurate feedback on what our customers are saying and helping to test the quality of our service.

• Stakeholder Management – responsibility, with colleagues, for ensuring core scripts and guidance are consistent with FCDO policy and service in line with Service Level Agreements. You will ensure team contact information is accurate and up to date. You will contribute to the continual development of our scripts and essential tools, to ensure handlers are able to provide essential information for over 100 countries and representing the CCC to key stakeholders and other parts of the FCDO, particularly in times of crisis and out of hours.

Because of the 24/7/365 nature of our work, you will need to work unsociable hours, including night shift, weekends, and public holidays. After completion of training, there will be a requirement to work from home for these unsociable hours shifts, including night shifts. It is important that you can freely work from home, including through the night, without disturbing or being interrupted by family or other people you may share your home with. NB: Please note that most shifts will be in normal office hours and this is primarily an office-based role.

The FCDO also operates an agile workforce. To facilitate this, you may be required to undertake other duties from time to time as we may reasonably require.

Person specification

Essential Criteria

• Ability to work unsociable hours, including nightshift and weekend working.
• Ability to deliver excellent customer communication and service with fluency in written and spoken English.
• Ability to work at pace and under pressure, with empathy and professionalism.
• Able to use a range of MS Office applications, a cloud-based telephony solution and comfortable working with technology.
• Good geographical knowledge.
• Ability to remain calm, professional and empathetic when responding to challenging or sensitive situations.

You must be a British Citizen at the time of application and, if invited to interview, you will need to bring proof of identity (British Passport/Driving Licence etc.) with you.

This role requires you to attainDeveloped Vetting (DV) security clearance.

For more information about this process, click here. Attaining DV will require you to have been resident in the UK for five of the last ten years. At least one year of this must have been a consecutive twelve-month period. Serving overseas with HM Forces, in some other official capacity as a representative of His Majesty’s Government or having lived overseas as a result of your parents’ or partner’s Government employment counts as UK residency for the purposes of security clearances.

It is essential in your application that you provide evidence and proven examples in each of the following Minimum Criteria, the Behaviours and the Technical question as far as you are able to do so. These responses will be further developed and discussed with those candidates invited for interview.

Behaviours

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Communicating and Influencing
• Changing and Improving
• Managing a Quality Service
• Delivering at Pace

We only ask for evidence of these behaviours on your application form:

• Communicating and Influencing

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £29,500, Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office contributes £8,546 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides (opens in a new window).

• A Civil Service Pension.
• 25 days Annual Leave per annum.
• 9 days Public and Privilege holidays per annum.
• Learning and Development tailored to your role.

See the attached candidate pack.

Things you need to know

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance (opens in a new window) for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

Selection process details

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours, Ab