Location

ONS operates a flexible hybrid working model across the UK, with colleagues linked to one of our contractual locations in Newport or Titchfield (Fareham) working between office and remote throughout the week.

As part of the hybrid working arrangement there is a 40% minimum office attendance requirement. Attendance is typically at your contractual office, with occasional travel to alternative locations.

About The Job

Job summary

Are you a designer with a talent for bringing graphics to life and communicating messages with motion? Interested in doing that on creative that reaches thousands of people every week?

If so, read on to find out more about this exciting opportunity within a creative design and video communications team.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is the UK’s largest producer of official statistics, covering a range of key economic, social and demographic topics. These include measuring changes in the value of the UK economy, estimating the size, geographic distribution, and characteristics of the population, and providing indicators of price inflation, employment, earnings, crime, and migration.

Graphic designers work in Communications and Digital Publishing (CDP) a directorate within Operations. We cover three core work areas:

Brand improvement

Managing, improving, and sharing brand guidelines and assets to build design consistency and clarity, both digital and physical, internal, and external. Contributing into the ONS Service Manual – a single source of truth for building on-brand products.

Design support

Meeting stakeholders, advising on design accessibility and best practice, and identifying opportunities where graphics could add value. Providing creative support and templates to all teams to enable them to deliver better day-to-day services that meet the needs of users.

Design outputs

Supporting core services, events, programmes and publications with design requests. Working in multidisciplinary teams designing creative content, this could include data visualisation experts, content designers, user researchers and campaign managers. We help to tell meaningful stories informed by data.

Job Description

As a Junior Graphic Designer you will play an exciting role producing motion graphics for ONS products and services. For this post we are looking for an individual to provide creative support to the Social Media & Marketing team and Video team. You must be proficient with Illustrator, After Effects and Premier, and be ready to jump into bringing our brand to life with animation.

You will be working as part of an established team of designers and videographers coming up with creative solutions to design briefs. Picking up a range of design and animation tasks you’ll work on creative for our social channels, internal and external communications.

Responsibilities

Here are some things you’ll be doing:

Designing visuals for social media campaigns.
Creating accessible diagrams to support statistical releases.
Co-creating storyboards and scripts for videos.
Animating scenes, simple characters and graphics in after effects.
Helping with video production and post-production tasks when required.
Writing brand guidance relating to the use of motion graphics.
Contributing to the Graphic Design Community of Practice by sharing design knowledge.
Creating new opportunities for using motion graphics to improve communications.
Working with a range of different stakeholders and multi-disciplinary teams notably the Marketing and Social Media Team and the Video Team.
Following workflow processes and making suggestions for improvements/efficiencies.
Paying close attention to detail in your work.

In this Junior Graphic Designer role level, you will:

Explain design decisions.
Work collaboratively.
Have a responsibility as part of a service.
Work independently after being given direction by more senior designers.
Identify user issues and important needs.

Person specification

Essential Criteria:

Communicating Information (Working) - L isten to the needs of design and business stakeholders and interpret information, take part in discussions within a multidisciplinary team, be an advocate for the team externally and can manage differing perspectives, shape and share communications relevant to the audience.
Tools and software (Practitioner) - U se software proficiently, quickly, and fluidly, use shortcuts and tricks and know what not to do, choose appropriate technology and outputs, for example, paper size and weight.
Community collaboration (Working) - C ontribute to the work of others, motivate and empower teams, create the right environment for teams to work in and can identify the best team makeup depending on the situation and recognise and deal with issues.
User focus (Working) - I dentify and engage with users or stakeholders to collate user needs evidence, understand and define research that fits user needs and use quantitative and qualitative data about users to turn user focus into outcomes.

Graphic designer - Government Digital and Data Profession Capability Framework

Qualifications

A Degree or Diploma in Graphic Design or equivalent academic qualification.

Or professional experience.

Behaviours

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

Working Together
Delivering at Pace
Making Effective Decisions

Technical Skills

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

The technical skills will be assessed at sift and interview. At interview you will present your portfolio of work. (Your Portfolio URL link should be entered within the CV part of the application, no more than three projects).

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £27,252, Office for National Statistics contributes £7,894 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

The Office for National Statistics is part of the Civil Service, and as such we share a number of key benefits with other departments, whilst also having our own unique offerings to support our 5400 valued colleagues across the business.

This role is part of the cross-government Government Digital and Data (formerly DDaT) profession framework. As a role within Government Digital and Data (formerly DDaT) at the ONS, we also offer benefits such as:

Protected Learning Time to spend on your personal development and side-projects.
A supportive and active Community of Practice which you will be expected to contribute to, helping ensure you and your colleagues get the training, development and opportunities you need to progress your careers.

We are committed to supporting our people’s wellbeing by offering flexible ways of working that support a healthy work life balance. We are happy to explore opportunities with you about working flexibly in line with our hybrid working policies.

Whether you are hearing about us for the first time or already know a bit about our organisation, we hope that the benefits pack attached (bottom of page) will give you a great insight into the benefits and facilities available to our colleagues and our fantastic working culture.

Inclusion & Accessibility

At ONS we are always looking to attract the very best people from the widest possible talent pool, and we are proud to be an inclusive, equal opportunities employer. As a member of the Business Disability Forum and a Disability Confident Leader we’re committed to ensuring that all candidates are treated fairly throughout the recruitment process.

As part of our application process, you will be prompted to provide details of any reasonable adjustments to our recruitment process that you need. If you would like to discuss any reasonable adjustments before applying, please contact the recruitment team in the first instance.

If you would like an accessible version of any of the attachments or recruitment documents below or linked to in this advert, please contact the recruitment team who will be happy to assist.

Things you need to know

Selection process details

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window) , and will assess your Behaviours, Experience and Technical skills.

Security Clearance

Individuals appointed to the Office for National Statistics or UK Statistics Authority will be subject to National Security Vetting at “SC Cleared” level for this post. To allow for meaningful checks to be carried out applicants will normally need to have lived in the UK for the 3 consecutive years immediately prior to applying.

A lack of UK residency in itself is not always a bar to security clearance.

We may also reach out to you mid-campaign to confirm eligibility for this role.

If you are unsure that you meet the eligibility above, please contact the recruitment email on the advert before applying to discuss.

Application Support

Applicants may utilise AI resources in their submissions; ensuring all information provided is factually accurate, truthful, and original, avoiding any form of plagiarism to maintain the authenticity and credibility of the application process.

Stage 1 – Application & Sift

A CV – this should include your job history relevant experience anda URL link to a portfolio of your work .
Your portfolio should contain examples of work appropriate to the role demonstrating your ability to deliver impactful work that meets a creative brief. Show work from no more than three projects please. Your portfolio and URL must be anonymised containing no personally identifiable information.
A personal statement – this should be no longer than 750 words. You should use this to provide evidence for each essential and technical criteria within the person specification. As the criteria are scored, we would recommend that you give clear examples for each including the impact of your actions and set them out using the STAR acronym (Situation, Task, Action, Result). Success Profiles Behaviour examples are not required at this stage.

In cases where there are a high number of applications the sift pass mark may be adjusted and candidates will be invited to interview in merit order, i.e. those scoring the highest.

Stage 2 – Interview

Should you be invited to interview, you will be assessed using various assessment techniques aligned to the Civil Service Success Profiles framework, where you'll be assessed against all the behaviours and technical skills outlined in this advert. Further details will be shared with you should you be invited to interview.

A presentation will be required at interview. Further information will be provided to shortlisted candidates prior to interview.

Interviews will be conducted by Video Conference.

Further details will be shared with you should you be invited to interview.

A reserve list may be held for a period up to 12 months from which further appointments may be made.

Important Dates:

Sift date from: 22/11/2024

Interview dates from: 09/12/2024

Dates are subject to change.

For the full terms and conditions please see attachment below.

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check.

Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check (opens in a new window) . See our vetting charter (opens in a new window) .

People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Nationality Requirements

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

UK nationals
nationals of the Republic of Ireland
nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.

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) .

The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.

The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy.

Diversity and Inclusion

The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see the Civil Service People Plan (opens in a new window) and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (opens in a new window) .

Apply and further information

Once this job has closed, the job advert will no longer be available. You may want to save a copy for your records.

Contact point for applicants

Job contact :

Name : Government Digital and Data Recruitment Team (formerly DDaT)
Email : Government-Digital-and-Data-Recruitment@ons.gov.uk

Recruitment team

Email : Government-Digital-and-Data-Recruitment@ons.gov.uk

Further information

If you feel your application has not been treated in accordance with the Recruitment Principles and you wish to make a complaint, in the first instance, you should contact recruitment.complaints@ons.gov.uk. If you are not satisfied with the response you receive from the Department, you can contact the Civil Service Commission

Office for National Statistics

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