Work

[Briefcase]

Unpaid trials. 

I have gone for trials at two well known places. One was a well known restaurant probably 12 years ago which was for an evening shift for 3-4 hours, I kind of knew I would be offered the job so I think it was more so I knew what he job could look like as well as them assessing me. I turned the job down in the end as decided to stay where I was but from memory I think I got offered free food at the end of the shift (I know that's kind of standard with restaurants). 

Second place was a well known bakery a couple years back and maybe an hour or so was a trial and the other hour an interview, I was offered the job (a week or two later) and remember being allowed to pretty much take any bakery related items that I wanted home, I love bread and bakeries so in my mind whatever the outcome I was happy to take some freebies home, although you then have to try be balanced in not going crazy taking everything incase it comes across the wrong way. 

As for the guy doing the claim, he knows he's fucked up the expenses so probably thinking if he threatens with legal action then it will be cheaper for the company to just pay him £10 than to go through all the court fees. Also seems the type to then play on the expense claim as a reason he didn't get the job. These people are the worst.

Secondment - I was seconded and had to apply for the job I had already been doing for the best part of 12 months, in fairness the interview was 10 mins and I was offered the job there and then but the worry and anxiety before then could have been avoided, the 12 months itself was stressful in that it felt like I was on trial the whole time, not sure I would do that again to be honest.

[DazzM]

44 minutes ago, SuperBacon said:

..but christ, just appoint them in the first place, don't bother with an interview process.

100% this. 
It's a waste of everyone's time. Especially as you said, when you're backing yourself and interview well, but it's really just a box ticking exercise before the person who does the job gets it anyway.

[DiscoPistol]

2 hours ago, DazzM said:

I can't remember if I've posted about this before, but any public sector workers, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.

Competency Based Interviews - How bollocks are these? Basically just rewarding people who can talk the talk, and quite often be the best bullshitter. I know of people who have gotten roles who just made up their examples and rehersed them.  

Public sector role hiring annoys me so much because it's rarely built on merit, but purely on those that who can hit the absolutely tosh STAR method.

Oh, and don't get me started on the need to advertise roles, that people are actually seconded to then interviewing for them knowing fine well who's going to get it...

We've started to give everyone the interview questions now - you can literally see people reading off the AI written answers. We're basically employing the best actors.

[westlondonmist]

18 minutes ago, DiscoPistol said:

We've started to give everyone the interview questions now - you can literally see people reading off the AI written answers. We're basically employing the best actors.

One of the teams that comes under the same director did that, they suggested it and she lapped it up, our team refused the idea. Said you'll just get several people with identical answers. Exactly what happened and they had to pull the idea. They refused to accept it was a stupid idea so gave them 60 minutes with the questions, similar stuff happened just at a lower level. 60 minutes is plenty to get AI to write you answers to 8-10 questions.

[BomberPat]

I think getting the interview questions ahead of time is good - a lot of places offer that as accommodation for neurodiverse candidates, and the last time I had an interview I requested them on those grounds. I've always found interviews massive sources of anxiety, and having the questions in advance helps with that and gives you time to prepare and actually plan an answer, rather than having to prepare for every possible question they might ask you. From an employers' perspective, you'd assume it's better to have a candidate who has had time to plan and to demonstrate their best work and the best possible answers to the questions you want to ask, than someone getting tripped up by a question they don't expect, or that they haven't been able to prepare a decent answer for.

I hadn't considered people using AI to come up with answers, but it just kind of highlights how dreadful interviews are as a means to demonstrate someone's actual aptitude for a job anyway, and half the reason AI is able to answer those questions is because the questions themselves can be formulaic to the point of cliché. 

[westlondonmist]

33 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

I think getting the interview questions ahead of time is good - a lot of places offer that as accommodation for neurodiverse candidates, and the last time I had an interview I requested them on those grounds. I've always found interviews massive sources of anxiety, and having the questions in advance helps with that and gives you time to prepare and actually plan an answer, rather than having to prepare for every possible question they might ask you. From an employers' perspective, you'd assume it's better to have a candidate who has had time to plan and to demonstrate their best work and the best possible answers to the questions you want to ask, than someone getting tripped up by a question they don't expect, or that they haven't been able to prepare a decent answer for.

I hadn't considered people using AI to come up with answers, but it just kind of highlights how dreadful interviews are as a means to demonstrate someone's actual aptitude for a job anyway, and half the reason AI is able to answer those questions is because the questions themselves can be formulaic to the point of cliché. 

I think it would work quite well if people had planned their answer but people were coming back with obviously AI written answers. Many hadn't even taken AI as a template and rewritten to sound authentic. So pre AI it would have made lots of sense, now not so much. My organisation scores answers 0-4, so doesn't they weren't allowed to score them down for using AI as nobody said they couldn't. 

I think it depends on what you want from an interview. My organisation is very strict, once you're in the interview your CV basically goes out the window and it's who can score the highest wins. I think that's stupid as they often want quite a specific answer, delivered in a certain way. That's something AI has probably worked out over years for local authority jobs. It's also lead to some real  useless twats bullshiting their way through the organisation. I've worked at other places where they purposely ask quite simple questions as they wanted to guage the person being able to fit in with the current workforce and also ask you questions based on your CV to sort of guage if you are telling porkies or not. I prefer that style of interview, where it's almost like a chat. 

I also think the department that gave the heads up, the Climate Emergency team get very young and often tech savy people applying, often graduates. I work in Waste and Street CLeaning, the people you get applying for that is older and I can imagine we wouldn't have had the same issues. 

Edited 6 hours ago by westlondonmist

[Monkee]

11 hours ago, davertfnewman said:

I'd say that they did cost you because of you having to use the holiday and not getting it back.

It didn’t cost me financially as I was still paid through my annual leave. I didn’t incur any other costs. If I didn’t have the leave so would have had to take unpaid leave then I would have to have weighed up whether it was worth me doing free work for two days or asking for some sort of compensation.

[Monkee]

6 hours ago, BomberPat said:

Explained it all to my team in our Teams chat so everyone could have a good laugh about it. I imagine he will continue to email us, as it's clear ours is the only email address he has and he's not smart enough to find someone else's, so I expect I'll hear from him again.

One thing to be mindful of if he’s that pedantic is if he does an FOI request he would get access to any Teams chats where he’s been named.

Edited 5 hours ago by Monkee