Content Designer

Job summary

Discover a career in your hands at HMRC. Whether you’re seeking purpose, growth, or a workplace that gives you a true sense of belonging, hear from some of our employees as they share their story about what it’s really like to work at HMRC.

Visit our YouTube channel to watch the full series and come and discover your potential.

At HMRC, we are committed to creating a great place to work for all our colleagues; an inclusive and respectful environment that reflects the diversity of the society we serve. We want to maximise the potential of everyone who works for us, and we offer a range of flexible working patterns and support to make an exciting career at HMRC accessible to you.

Diverse perspectives and experiences are critical to our success, and we encourage applications from all people from all backgrounds with the experience and skills needed to perform this role.

HMRC is one of the largest organisations in the UK and the biggest digital operation in Government. Our digital business runs the IT behind tax and benefits services for 45 million individual and 5 million business customers.

We’re making HMRC services and information simpler, clearer and faster for our colleagues. To do that, we need content designers who will help us design end-to-end services based on user needs.

We want you to come and be part of a multi-disciplinary team and transform the way we deliver HR, Finance, and Procurement services to our colleagues in HMRC, Department for Transport, and Ministry of Housing, Communities, and Local Government – a group of departments known as the Unity Cluster.

This is a collaborative initiative which aims to create a shared operation model, leveraging cloud technology to enhance efficiency and decision making across these departments.

Job description

Content designers work on content that helps to form the end-to-end journey of a service, helping users complete their goal and government to deliver a policy intent.

Their work may involve the creation of, or change to, a transaction, product or single piece of content which could be from across digital and offline channels and be provided by different parts of government.

Content Designer is a role for an individual with proven experience in designing content to meet user needs.

In this role, you will work collaboratively with other user-centred design professionals and business stakeholders to define what will be developed to meet users’ needs. You will produce clear and meaningful content based on user needs, and feed into content strategies.

You will actively engage with and contribute to our active and supportive content design community in HMRC and across government.

Person specification

As a Content Designer, you will:

• Line manage, support and mentor Junior Content Designers.

• Map user journeys and processes.

• Use best practice, data and research to design and iterate usable and accessible content.

• Feed into content strategies for portfolios of work to inform end-to-end journeys.

• Build collaborative relationships with stakeholders, including through workshops and pair-writing sessions.

You will also be expected to:

• Actively participate in the HMRC and cross-government design communities, both digitally and face-to-face.
• Proactively seek new learning opportunities and look to continually improve by gaining feedback from your peers and the business.

Essential Criteria:

You must have:

• Demonstrable skill and experience in developing accessible content for online guidance or transactions and working to style and standard guidelines.
• Experience of journey mapping and needs analysis – being able to take existing content and identify gaps and overlaps.
• Experience of talking about your design decisions and approach to stakeholders of various levels, and convincing them that user needs and a user-centred approach are the right way to design content.
• Experience and an ability to use metrics and user feedback to inform content design.
• Experience of coaching and mentoring other content designers, growing skills, and providing constructive feedback on work.

Further Location Information

Please ensure that you only apply for a location that you are willing and able to work from, as we will only make one offer of employment. Any additional notes included in a ‘Further Location Preferences (optional)’ field within the application form, will not be considered. Please be aware that you cannot change your location preference after submitting your application.

How to Apply

As part of the application process, you will be asked to provide the following:

• A name-blind CV detailing your job history.
• A 750-word Personal Statement. Your Personal Statement should be used to describe how your skills and experience would be suitable for the advertised role, making reference to the essential criteria and person specification outlined in the advert.

Further details around what this will entail are listed on the application form.

Sift

In the event of a large number of applications being received, an initial sift may be held on the CV.

At full sift the CV and Personal Statement will be assessed, with the successful candidates being invited to interview.

We may also raise the score required at any stage of the process if we receive a high number of applications.

Interview

During the panel interview you will be asked to prepare a 10 minute presentation, using an example of your own work to demonstrate how you meet one of the technical skills listed above and the Content Designer Framework: https://ddat-capability-framework.service.gov.uk/role/content-designer.

You will also be asked to describe further personal experienced based examples of work which demonstrates the remaining technical skills required for this role. Further details of the skill to be demonstrated will be included with the invitation to interview.

Interviews will take place via video link. Sift and interview dates to be confirmed.

Please note that circumstances may arise that require the planned interview format to change. We will endeavour to provide you with as much notice of any change as possible.