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And one utter clown of an
interviewer imagines he has contributed something clever and witty
to the world. The question is not from one of my own interviews,
but was instead the experience of a friend who had applied for a
job as a van driver with a supermarket chain. I cannot think
of a witty reply; perhaps, "And you, Sir, are a cretin
and an onanist" would be as fitting a riposte as you could
find.
What is it about the process
of looking for a job that throws up such idiocies at every turn?
From the initial advert in the newspaper right through to interview
stage, Human Resource Departments - and what a piece of Newspeak
that is in itself - seem quite unaware of the nonsense that they
produce day after day. Let's look at the three main steps
of finding new staff:
| THE
ADVERTISEMENT |
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Daft
Job Titles are not new, but it is a problem that seems to
be getting worse. The objection is not only that they
are naff in themselves, but that sometimes they are so confusing
that they may even be seen by some people as not the type of
job they want, and thus deter some suitable candidates.
Try this conversation between myself and a very polite and helpful
woman in the local Regional offices, one day when their website
was down.
Hello,
I've just been looking at your advert in the Jobcentre,
and I'm wondering what Regeneration Operatives are when
they're at home.
Well,
you'd actually be working in a Primary School, you see.
What,
are the children all Borgs then?
(Laughs)
No, they're not Borgs. You see, they don't cook school
meals on the premises. They're brought in cooked and
chilled, and the school has a microwave, and er, well...
You pop
them in the microwave, and press a button?
Yes,
that's about the size of it.
And there was me imagining
it had something to do with local industry, though I did think
that £4.10 an hour was a bit stingy for helping to regenerate
the Borders economy. Ah well, no harm done - but were
there any very good kitchen assistants out there who saw the
posh title and just moved on to the next ad?
Meaningless Job Specs
are just as bad, since it means that people are being paid
just to produce stylish-sounding phrases with no substance
to them. Here are a few:
To
keep to the organisation's safety policy
Utter rubbish. It is the duty of every employee in the
country to act in accordance with such regulations, so this
is just waffle.
Understand
and observe confidentiality
More padding. This is the sort of thing to be explained
at interview or appointment, and no-one insufficiently adult
to understand confidentiality should be in the job market
at all. But why put it in a Job Spec? Will anyone
feel unqualified to understand confidentiality?
Ability
to prioritise workload
How many jobs outwith the most unchanging of production
lines do NOT require the incumbent to prioritise a workload?
This is part of life, for God's sake! And is anyone
at all put off applying by this "requirement"?
Be capable
of working under pressure
Every job gets busy at some time, and people have to step
up a gear. This is hot air, and yet now seems
to appear on every job spec under the sun, even those for
the most junior jobs, where "pressure" would seem
a slight exaggeration.
Must be
a proactive team player
Let's produce some buzz words, and pretend they mean something.
Enthusiastic
and motivated
Assuming that no-one will turn up for interview and claim
NOT to be enthusiastic about the job, this would be flatus
in any context. Coming as it did from an Ad for a
Senior Manager - whose previous career success will hardly
have come from idleness and lack of motivation - it is utterly
dismal. And the most dismal thing of all is that in
the HR Department that morning someone thought they were
being busy and productive when they came up with the requirement
for a Senior Manager to be "enthusiastic".
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| APPLICATION
FORMS |
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| I
have a revolutionary idea for industry, and that is that
those who design things actually try them out before forcing
them on other people. It would only take a few minutes,
and the designers might realise that referees have addresses
that require more than three lines, or that some people have
work histories or academic qualifications that cannot be squeezed
into a box four inches deep. Here are some other observations:
Intrusive or Immaterial
Questions
A resolution for 2002 is not to answer such questions, the
most common of which is the one about marital status.
For it is of no concern whatsoever to the potential employer
whether a candidate is married, single, divorced - or for
that matter is in a formal relationship with a Sooty puppet.
And "Married" does not even mean anything nowadays,
with so many people having long-term relationships which are
marriages in all but law. Other objectionable questions
are:
Your doctor?
Your next of kin?
"Details will be provided on appointment" is the
only proper answer to such intrusiveness.
Date of
Birth AND Age
Why? Can they not count?
Previous
salary
From now this question will be ignored. The salary
levels for most jobs are set anyway, and the potential employer
has no cause to ask this. Such things are useful guides
only for those few senior appointments where a salary is
negotiable.
Rehabilitation
of Offenders Act
One Friday night in 1969 I was picked up drunk - alas not
by a loose woman but by the police. I spent a night
in the cells, and was fined £3. By 1974, this conviction
was considered "spent" under the Rehabilitation
of Offenders Act, which acknowledges that minor slips many
years ago are no guide to the current reliability or respectability
of personnel. Thus, under the Act I may lawfully
declare that I have no convictions.
Ah, but some
jobs are exempt from the provisions of the Act, and you
must declare all convictions. In these circumstances,
employers are meant to explain on the form why the particular
job is exempt, and to their credit these guidelines are
followed absolutely correctly by Borders College.
But two other public bodies are not so impressive, for neither
of them indicate why they are claiming exemption for the
job in question. The reason appears to be that
they are under the misapprehension that they have a blanket
exemption, so they can just stick it on every application
form. These bodies do NOT have blanket exemption,
for jobs with them are exempt only if they meet certain
criteria. I will in future refuse to complete
this part of an application form where I feel the employer
is unlawfully claiming exemption - at any rate until their
claim is satisfactorily explained.
Footnote
I would be surprised if anyone genuinely thought me unsuitable
for a job just because I had got drunk when I was a teenager;
it is nonetheless a bit embarrassing to have to put it down
(it was even brought up in a recent interview). I
have been in touch with NACRO about this, who naturally
support my views completely; also with the Home Office,
who are at present conducting a review of the Act, and are
asking for public input. They claimed great sympathy
for my view that one-off victimless "crimes" such
as this be redefined as misdemeanours1 and should
be notifiable only to very few employers indeed (police
etc.). Not long after this flannel from HM Civil Service,
I read that Mr Blunkett was thinking of extending
exemptions from the Act. What can you say?
1Minor
traffic offences are so redefined.
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| INTERVIEWS |
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Smiling
politely and answering idiotic questions with my natural
courtesy is not getting me anywhere. Time, I think, to
react differently to questions such as these:
Can you
do e-mails?
Halfway through what I had imagined to be a serious interview,
I was asked whether I knew how to send an e-mail.
I replied politely that yes, I used e-mail every day of
life. A couple of minutes later I was asked
if I could do a Mail Merge. Now hold on here.
My CV - and any application form I complete - tends to include
words like "Senior Analyst / Programmer" and "Thorough
knowledge of MS Office". And they want
to know if I can send an e-mail? Perhaps the
next time I should get up and sit on their desk, and say,
"Yes, I can do Mail Merges, and Spreadsheets, and Databases,
and Websites, and e-mail and..." (cue music)
I can
send a lit'rate email both emboldened and italicised;
Present a tidy spreadsheet with statistics unromanticised
In short, in matters Microsoft or database-relational
I am the very model - for your Systems Informational
At the very
least it should get me a restful time in a local NHS facility.
How important
do you think is accuracy at work?
A classic, especially considering recent events in the organisation
that asked me that. But what are you meant to reply?
Are you meant to ask for a scale so that you might consider
the question? Are there alternatives like:
- Couldn't
give a toss
- Might
think about it on a good day
- You win
some, you lose some
- Nice to
get things right, mostly
- Yes, I
do a good and accurate job
What do they
seriously expect people to say?
Could
you cope if you were left alone in the office?
Even on my best days I doubt that I could be mistaken for
a 16-year-old, so I am at a loss to explain why such questions
are asked. Do these interviewers play Pass
the Brain Cell in their spare time? Do I look
like someone who has never been alone in an office?
Stand by for fireworks if I am ever again asked this sort
of thing.
Can you
deal with paper filing systems?
This was such a crass question that I literally did not
understand it when it was asked. At the time my brain
just did not take it in as meaningful English, and I found
myself wondering what sort of systems they could possibly
be talking about.
I have had only three
good interviews in recent months: one was with Borders
Primary Care, which landed me a temporary position;
the other two were, noticeably, both with private firms (not
public bodies) and were conducted by one interviewer - not
the panels of three that seem de rigueur for any public
job nowadays, even one paying less than 10k. Sooner
or later my inborn courtesy will be overwhelmed by a desire
to answer, "What sort of a stupid bloody question is
that?". It may mean a long time on the dole; but
for one day at least I'll feel bloody good.
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