Words to remember:

career	rural
accountant	obtain
solicitor	welfare services
pattern	volunteer
unwise	promotion
consequences	available
senior	increasingly
hostility	involve
cope with	salary
turnover	negotiate
profitability	leeway
urban

Trends in recruitment

Public expenditure is under heavy scrutiny and recruitment is therefore likely to continue at a very low level in the foreseeable future. The larger authorities, ie County Councils, Metropolitan Districts and London Boroughs, have tended to be the major recruiters of graduates in the past but they are also drastically reviewing their recruitment policies in the face of severe spending cuts.

For recruitment purposes, some authorities notify their vacancies for graduates to Universities and Polytechnics in a piece-meal fashion during the year. Others place their vacancies in the Forward and Current Vacancies lists produced fortnightly by the Central Services Unit for University and Polytechnic careers services, and available from your careers service. In addition, training schemes for public finance and accountancy are normally advertised by CIPFA centrally in the press, while representatives of that institute visit many institutions to interview students during the 'milkround'. Public finance is one area in which there has been a reasonably continuous high level of recruitment.

Any vacancies that may arise in other areas are more likely to be advertised in the press. There is a weekly local government job publication 'Opportunities' available at your careers service and the national daily papers (Guardian, Daily Telegraph, Times) also carry vacancies. Very often beginners' and trainee jobs are advertised in the local paper so, if you want to work in a particular authority, it is useful to watch the local press.

You can also write directly to an authority; your careers service will have a list of the personnel officers and their addresses, although it is preferable to write direct to the department that you are interested in, as some authorities do not now have a central personnel section, at least, not for recruitment purposes. If you are really interested in finding out more about a career in local government you should try to spend a certain amount of time in the department that interests you in your local council offices.

Words to remember:

expenditure	cuts
recruitment	notify
foreseeable	advertise

Types of work

The following paragraphs describe very briefly some of the main types of work available in local government. The majority of these occupations are covered in more detail in other AGCAS information booklets — the titles of which are mentioned at the end of each paragraph. Longer explanations are given of three types of work not covered in greater detail elsewhere—Environmental Health, Housing, and Trading Standards and Consumer Protection.