110,000 vacancies in adult social care - some suggestions from a recent recruit.

Two suggestions to help the government fill those vacancies Ban zero-hours contracts - the bane of the sector for anyone with a family, rent or mortgage to pay or even a half-decent life to live. Pay at least £10 per hour - Again, how can care workers afford to live? Currently, by denying both, the government and employers are expecting the workforce to pay the price for their failure to understand or acknowledge the basics of 'supply and demand'. By doing so, they're denying care workers a decent reward for their very worthwhile labours and ensuring the NHS will continue to shoulder the burden for their misconceived policies. And they could also start to realise that families can no longer be expected to pay for spiralling social care costs - much of which end up being paid out in dividends to private sector providers' shareholders.

Could you tell me about a time when you...?

I was enduring yet another competency-based interview recently when a thought came to me. Although these things are intended to show a potential employer how an applicant fulfils a job spec, in reality they are deeply biased against older applicants. To illustrate this, picture Candidates A and B: A has four years recent and relevant experience in the position they're applying for. Candidate B, however, has a working life extending back 40 years, with a wide range of experience culled from working in a range of different industries or workplaces. An interview panel member asks both: 'could you tell me a time when you flange wangled a spurrfler successfully?'. Candidate A did this for the second time only last week and gives a faultless answer. Candidate B, however, has flange wangled for decades but can't immediately remember a specific spurrfler related episode; she could well be able do it in her sleep, but this time-limited interview scenario doesn't operate in her favour, and she comes across as a flange wangling ignoramus. It's only on leaving the interview that a classic spurrfler wangle from 2002 floods back into her memory, but by then it is too late, and Candidate B is well on the way to receiving a generic bum's rush rejection, along the lines of '... strong field, impressive qualifications... unfortunately...' and so joins the scrap heap. I wonder if the HR gurus who come up with this torture ever have to face competency-based interview questions along the lines of 'can you describe a time when you successfully screwed over the career prospect of older job applicants and would you like to tell us about it?'

A dark mark on the CV

I suspect, like me, many people have a job with a particular company or organisation that they'd rather forget. A blot on their employment history that marks a wrong decision or an oversold set of promises that never quite lived up to recruitment hype or expectations. Mine happened several years ago and only lasted 7 months; fortunately a previous opportunity became live again and I was able to jump ship, but the painful memories remain. Fast forward, then, to last week when a 'recruitment partner' (what that?) contacted me to say that he'd like to 'source' me for a role. As an aside at this point, I suppose it's inevitable, but depressing nonetheless, that the monstrous regiments of the CIPD, having so thoroughly infected HR and recruitment with their mendacious spin and psychobabble should now turn their rapacious gaze on the English language as a whole. But it's worth stating, perhaps if only for the grammatical record, that source should remain a noun and not become a verb on their dodgy say so. Putting the aside to one side. The company name wasn't one I'd heard of before, but a quick Google showed the area of work - and geographic location - to be a rather uncomfortable match with the black hole in my CV, into which hopes and dreams vanished - if only for 7 months. I acted quickly, thanking for interest etc., but pointing out the match to the worst job I'd ever had, and closed wishing the partner every success in filling the vacancy. But the thought remained: no matter how good an HR professional is at weaving their 'magic' - not even they can beat the golden rule that you can't polish a turd. Though in my mind, he had at least tried to cover this one with glitter.

Searching

It seems that 14% of hits on my Linkedin site this week are from 'human resources specialists'.
A lower form of existence I've yet to encounter. Be gone, foul pests, be gone I say.

Just a tiny bit call centre

I'm looking for some extra work at the moment and was offered a 'phone interview for a job with one of the major outsourcing companies (no names, you'll see why...) The advert was non-specific on a number of key areas: I knew what service was being provided, but for whom and how were well hidden behind generic - and in several places ungrammatical - waffle. A few minutes in, the HR bod mentioned that the job could involve handling a number of telephone calls, to which I asked 'is this a call centre?' A pretty straightforward question in the circumstances, one would have thought. To which the answer ran along the lines of 'no, um, rather yes'. It either is or it isn't - you can't be a 'little bit' call centre any more than you can be a little bit pregnant. There comes a point when relativism has to meet certain boundaries and I felt less than comfortable that an prospective employer could want to hide the real nature of a job by advertising in such broad terms.

Is there a competent elephant in the room?

It might come as a surprise, but there are some who work in the private sector who might be tempted to apply for a public sector post on the basis that it meets their skill set. Private sector job descriptions can be very long-winded and appear more as a wishlist for a superhuman form of employee possessing skills and experience that runs for page after page. For the intending applicant, these are daunting at first reading, but if you can group them into workable categories that can be addressed in the application, then a perceptive recruiter (even if not possessed of sufficient editorial skill to prune the verbage in the first place) can evaluate a ‘broad-brush’ application. In the public sector, however, the tendency now if for highly specific internal skills that appear almost impenetrable to the private sector (or, even worse, self-employed/freelance applicant). This is strange, given that many public sector employers trumpet ‘diversity’ and ‘equality’ as being key to their recruitment processes. The paradox is further complicated by the universal – if nonsensical – way that both public and private sectors have embraced competency-based interviews as the only game in town. Faced with the usual six competency questions (three broad, three job specific) the danger for the private sector ‘outsider’ who has made it to interview is that you are hard pressed to identify the key words and phrases that are often meat and drink to public sector ‘insider’ applicants. Short of a Rosetta Stone or the divining powers of a dowser, private sector or freelance applicants are immediately at a serious disadvantage and can go on to award themselves the bum’s rush before they even realise that something’s amiss in their responses. A nice touchy feely ‘We welcome applicants irrespective of age gender, orientation, ethnicity, religion’ is all very well, but diversity can go take a running jump if you then rule the applicant out by a too narrow or overly subjective application of the competency criteria.

Gone for a soldier?

Being in need of some teaching work after the late cancellation of a course, I registered with a number of agencies and, by way of a circuitous cyberspace route, ended up in the clutches of Totaljobs, website dedicated, according to its blurb, to finding us all our 'perfect' job. In my case, this should have been within the, admittedly, fairly narrow confines of Post-16/FE Law teaching or editorial work. However, Totaljobs have other plans for me, because they've taken to sending me several links per day to the Army. And not just any military role, but rather specialised stuff, such as 'mapping', mail courier (thought they'd all be on email now), or a rather more mundane 'warehouse operative' role. Have to wonder, how many of those who follow the link all the way to the recruiting office end up in something altogether more mainstream military, such as infantry? Still, I'll bear it in mind - as long, that is, as the Army are indeed open to discussing career options with a 50-something with blood pressure and a bad back who can't manage Tuesdays due to a prior work commitment...

A passionate new job opportunity

Noticed a promising new job advertised online, a transport company wanted a training consultant. But decided not to bother when I read the HR spiel. Apparently, they want someone who's 'passionate' about putting stuff in lorries to teach others how to do it 'passionately' too. Where do HR/recruitment wonks learn to spout such utter bollocks?

An exciting employment opportunity, or an over-excited employee?

It's high time the burgeoning employment agency sector was subject to regulation and statutory control, especially in the education sector. I was contacted, cold-called to be precise, the other day by an agency that said it had seen my CV, presumably on another recruitment agency website, as I hadn't even heard of them previously, and wondered if I could send them an up-to-date version. Where, I asked, was the job; not an unreasonable question. While, however, my CV was enthusiastically received - 'excellent' was the feedback from the 'consultant', my request was politely deflected - she 'was not at liberty' to discuss the actual school. Neither, as it turned out, was she able to be more enlightening on the number of hours or rate of pay - pretty much the most basic information you would expect - particularly in view of the long list of personal details they wanted from me. A second request for further information was met with the response that my previously 'excellent' CV was now sadly missing essential details that the anonymous school deemed to be essential. I demurred at this point, only to receive a rather embarrassing email from my current line manager, just letting me know he'd received a reference request. Now, I work part-time, and he has provided references previously - but only after I've given my permission for him to be approached. Here, we had a bunch of incompetents and shysters, who couldn't or wouldn't provide me with even the most basic details of the job, taking the decision to approach at least one of my referees to ask for a reference. After complaining to the agency, I was then told the fault was that of an 'over-exuberant' employee. Bad workmen and tools came to mind when I read it. I think the fault is rather over-caffeined, commission-driven cowboys let loose in a sector of which they have little real knowledge or understanding.

Recruitment agencies - a suitable case for regulation, or possible extermination

I'm a qualified and experienced post-16 teacher. Wanting to increase my teaching work, I registered with some agencies - mainly because many FE colleges now only recruit part-time and hourly paid teaching staff in this way. The downside - for the teacher - here is that, while agencies class you as 'self-employed', in reality you have the worst of both worlds, being expected to pay for such essentials as DBS checks (successor to the CRB), allowing you to work with young people, you can't claim travel or other expenses that the true self-employed can, because you are treated as an employee by HMRC. This not-so-neat trick aside, I naively thought that the agency would take the leg-work out of the job search. How wrong I was. For a start, registering with one online service seems to mean that your details are passed to a number of others, who all then send you details of the same job (albeit sometimes with different pay rates - of which, more later). The other problem is that, initially at least, you are promised a fantastic service and rapid results. In my case, this is mere hot-air: my subject - Law - is not one where vacancies often occur, so I soon learned to weed out the fantasy merchants. Now, to pay. I recently entered a digital merry-go-round involving a sixth form college near Wakefield that uses an agency to fill its vacancies. Having registered with the agency and filed my CV online, I was perplexed to see the advert on the agency's website, only to be told that there was a more urgent vacancy in Barnsley. Too far to travel, I told them - especially on the £16.00 per hour fee on offer, but Wakefield would be fine. The agency bod promised to get back to me, but then fell into sullen silence. The job was re-advertised several times online, and I applied to each one. Finally, tiring of getting nowhere with the agency, I contacted the college direct. Their HR dept were, I was assured, responsible for advertising all vacancies - they're on our website, I was also told. So I tried to apply direct, only to be informed that there were no Law teaching vacancies. No-one seemed to tell the agency, however, because the email alerts for this - now mythical - job kept on coming. Finally, someone from the agency got in touch to arrange an 'informal meeting' with a curriculum manager at the college, the pay? A princely £16.00 per hour. Now, this isn't a teacher-whinge: I also work in the real world of publishing so I know pay levels haven't increased much, if at all, for the best part of 10 years. But I also realise that for every lesson in the classroom, you need to make extensive preparations and mark the resulting efforts of your students, so £16.00 for the hour on your feet actually teaching soon reduces when you factor in the preparation and marking to something approaching minimum wage levels. Question to FE students and their parents: do you, or your offspring, really want to be taught by a teacher earning close to the minimum wage? We're talking A-levels here, a two-year commitment intended to prepare students for university. Sixteen pounds an hour isn't much in the way of incentive to stay with a college for two minutes, let alone the two years of AS and A2 level study, and students value continuity and the relations they establish with their tutors. Who, also remember, are frequently called on to help out with UCAS applications - a time-consuming, though ultimately enriching experience for all concerned, but one that cries out for continuity of service. After all, you can't provide a meaningful reference if you're the fourth teacher to deliver the subject because the other three have left to take up more lucrative work involving burger-flipping or manual car washing. I finally decided against taking up the offer of the 'informal chat' when a second agency - one I hadn't previously registered with - contacted me via a site called CV Library, which seems to act as a clearing house for employment agencies, offering the same post at £18.00 per hour, which proves that agencies must be making a large profit by suppressing the wages of those hapless enough to register with the hoping for a decent wage for their labours. The growth of teacher recruitment agencies has not been matched by any meaningful protection for those who look to them for work, and there is little to prevent the more desperate 'recruitment consultants' making extravagant claims when enticing in new recruits. For me, I'll stay with my two-days' teaching and wait for an upturn in publishing. Either that, or I could join the fantasists in recruitment consultancy - there are several teaching agencies who regularly advertise their internal vacancies amongst the teaching and training jobs. Wonder how I'd manage as a gamekeeper turned poacher?

A career in recruitment, never listen to anyone again

I've been looking for some extra work and thought I'd try a few of the myriad recruitment agencies that flooded my search results. They seem to follow a basic pattern: a breathless and urgent promise, followed by ever longer waits for more details - then silence, when you realise they've lost interest and gone onto someone who is easier to place (and easier for them to claim commission). Now another dimension has crept in, because they've started to email asking if I'd like to work in recruitment myself. Have to admit, after dealing with a few of these over-hyped individuals over the last few weeks, there is a superficial attraction. I mean, where else could I get paid for not paying attention to what people tell me and then trying to fit obviously square pegs into very round holes just for the sheer commission-driven hell of it?