Back in the 80's before Access came along I used to manage a department of around 145 people in the NHS. This meant that I did a fair amount of interviewing at regular intervals. We used to get dozens - nay hundreds of applications for each vacancy. This is how I weeded then down to a reasonable number who got interviewed. The jobs did entail the staff to interface and communicate with patients.

Remember this was 25 years ago and things have changed a little, although I know these criteria are still adhered to in many NHS departments today.

1) Check each form for any gramatical or spelling error. If there were any then they got rejected. i.e. if people can't be bothered to fill in an application form using correct grammar and spelling then they would probobly be even worse in the job.

2) Reject any people not born in the UK. i.e. Australians are laid back and too busy thinking about non-work time and BBQ's, Americans can appear brash and arrogant, The French are. . .well, French etc.etc. Always best to have UK born people talking and guiding patients - patients object to being told what to do by a foreigner.

3) Reject any married woman of child bearing age. Chances are they would be off on maternity leave within the first year leaving other staff to cover as no extra staff were allowed. This caused resentment within the staff against the preggers woman. I used to ask them if they planned on having a baby, this was then deemed sexist so I rejected them all instead.

4) Reject any uni graduate, they are only looking for a stop-gap job and will move on quickly thus wasting their training.

5) Reject any women with young children as they will phone in and stay off if little Timmy has a sniffle, leaving other staff to cover as well as doing their own jobs. Women with children always put the children first and think nothing of phoning in and not coming in to work.

The other criteria being relevant experience and all the usuals.

What criteria do you use when you select for interview?

Col

i.e. as a result of 3 and 5 any woman ages 20-35 have not need to apply, they will be rejected...

OMG !

Col:
Did you have ANY females working in your dept.?
I would think your criteria would eliminate them all.
If I tried somthing like that I would have picketers outside the door in no time.

Back in the 80's before Access came along I used to manage a department of around 145 people in the NHS. This meant that I did a fair amount of interviewing at regular intervals. We used to get dozens - nay hundreds of applications for each vacancy. This is how I weeded then down to a reasonable number who got interviewed. The jobs did entail the staff to interface and communicate with patients.

Remember this was 25 years ago and things have changed a little, although I know these criteria are still adhered to in many NHS departments today.

1) Check each form for any gramatical or spelling error. If there were any then they got rejected. i.e. if people can't be bothered to fill in an application form using correct grammar and spelling then they would probobly be even worse in the job.

2) Reject any people not born in the UK. i.e. Australians are laid back and too busy thinking about non-work time and BBQ's, Americans can appear brash and arrogant, The French are. . .well, French etc.etc. Always best to have UK born people talking and guiding patients - patients object to being told what to do by a foreigner.

3) Reject any married woman of child bearing age. Chances are they would be off on maternity leave within the first year leaving other staff to cover as no extra staff were allowed. This caused resentment within the staff against the preggers woman. I used to ask them if they planned on having a baby, this was then deemed sexist so I rejected them all instead.

4) Reject any uni graduate, they are only looking for a stop-gap job and will move on quickly thus wasting their training.

5) Reject any women with young children as they will phone in and stay off if little Timmy has a sniffle, leaving other staff to cover as well as doing their own jobs. Women with children always put the children first and think nothing of phoning in and not coming in to work.

The other criteria being relevant experience and all the usuals.

What criteria do you use when you select for interview?

Col

A sense of humour.

The people I bring in with me on term contracts are carefully selected by their ability to perform their required tasks. It really does not matter if they are different race, colour, religion, sex or any other differences as a diverse team performs better under pressure then a gathering of cloned drones. And I really do not care if they would probobly make gramatical errors as we are not necessarily limited to speaking with the Queen's English.

Col:
Did you have ANY females working in your dept.?
I would think your criteria would eliminate them all.
If I tried somthing like that I would have picketers outside the door in no time.

Firstly this was in the early 80's over 25 years ago.

98% of my staff were female - average age 22. The work was in Medical Records, secretarial, general admin, receptionists, clinic clerks, admission clerks, transport clerks, ward clerks etc.etc. Very few males applied for these posts.
I always had at least 4 or 5 off on maternity leave, a few more on sick leave, and a few on annual leave. This meant that nearly 25% of my staff were off at any one time. The biggest bugbear of the remaining staff was maternity leave as we were not allowed any additional staff to cover.
If any of the girls told me they were getting married, my heart would sink as that usually meant a baby turning up in a year or so.

The NHS thinks it has outlawed the techniques I used (and was instructed to use by senior managers at that time) but having recently retired from the NHS, I can tell you these same techniques are still used today by some managers.

Don't misunderstand me, this was normal practice at that time, and was not deemed unusual. My ideal candidate was a single female aged 20 or less who could spell, speak properly and looked smart and showed she had some intelligence about her.
Any female candidate I interviewed who wore an engagement ring, I asked them when they were getting married and weighed up whether it would be advantageous for the department to employ her or not.

Over the period of a year or two, the maternity leave absence was cut by 50%, sickness leave was cut dramatically and the staff turnover was cut by 70% compared to when I took over as manager.

Col

And I really do not care if they would probobly make gramatical errors as we are not necessarily limited to speaking with the Queen's English.

It does matter however, when your clerks have to interpret and copy diagnosis test results and figures as the Consultant bases his diagnosis on what the girls wrote.

It was not just me being pedantic or having a laugh like we do here. If lives or treatment depends on being accurate, then you make bloody sure they get it right.

Col

Since we used to get all sorts of crazy-butt customer requests, I would let the personnel group do their filtration first. When it came time for the in-department interviews, I always had four topics that I could pick to ask the candidates what they knew about... some off-the-wall, out-of-left-field topic. I wasn't testing what they knew but whether they would tell me the truth of how much or how little they knew.

If they tried to make up something, I became suspicious. One guy told me flat out, "I've never heard of that. Do you get much call for that technique?" (In fact, we had one repeat-business customer for whom we DID get requests for text-parser command interpreters now and then, and parser theory was one of my oddball questions.) The guy who was honest got an offer. He turned out pretty well.

The best catch of all was, get this, a young Taiwanese woman who was in the country with her husband. She was a cook who had written a book on Imperial Chinese cuisine, but didn't want a culinary career. She just wanted a chance. The idea that she finished a book convinced me that she would finish other projects so I convinced the bosses to give her the chance. Now 30+ years later she is still enjoying her career in programming and management. And she remembers who saw her persistence.

Identifying a good candidate is always a trick. It is always a matter of observation and being willing to look.

From the other side of the desk…

Employer; do you mind if I ask how much you got in your last job?
Me; no.
Tick!
Tick!
Tick!
Employer; well, how much did you get in your last job?
Me; do you mind if I don’t tell you?

I didn’t get the job but I really didn’t want it.
I had to consider the total lack of privacy that the employer was prepared to give me while also considering the total level of privacy they would expect from me.

3) Reject any married woman of child bearing age. Chances are they would be off on maternity leave within the first year leaving other staff to cover as no extra staff were allowed. This caused resentment within the staff against the preggers woman. I used to ask them if they planned on having a baby, this was then deemed sexist so I rejected them all instead.

Col

Aren't expectant fathers allowed a years paternity leave now under EU rules?:rolleyes:

Firstly this was in the early 80's over 25 years ago.


Wow you've been a dick for over 25 years, congratulations.

Wow you've been a dick for over 25 years, congratulations.
How long for yourself?

Wow you've been a dick for over 25 years, congratulations.

Care to elaborate on that?

Col

Hes calling you a long standing dick. I'd be quite flattered! Better than short and flacid.

Care to elaborate on that?

Col

No, I consider my previous statement to be both clear and concise.

No, I consider my previous statement to be both clear and concise.

I wasn't aware that I knew you 25 years ago. Maybe you were one of the pillocks I rejected for interview. Did you ever live in Sussex?

Col

I was debating as to whether I would contribute to this thread, and have come to the conclusion that whichever NHS Trust you worked for in Sussex did not have a very good HR department. Why? well if they have had done an audit on the composition of departmental staffing types they would have noticed that your department was totally unbalanced in respect to other departments. This is based on the principle that other department heads did not have the same opinion as yourself when it came to shortlisting applicants.

Remember, Bill Gates was turned down for a loan by 3 banks when he first approached them with his business plan.

I too have NHS experience going back to the 80's, fortunately not in Sussex, and found that my Trust had a wide spectrum of personnel in every department, be it IT, Accomodation, Nursing, whatever.

David

I wasn't aware that I knew you 25 years ago. Maybe you were one of the pillocks I rejected for interview. Did you ever live in Sussex?

Col

So the people you rejected are automatically pillocks:confused:

Seems a bit harsh to label a married woman of child bearing age a pillock but still what else should be expected from a dick. :rolleyes:

No, I consider my previous statement to be both clear and concise.
.........and childish:rolleyes:

if they have had done an audit on the composition of departmental staffing types they would have noticed that your department was totally unbalanced in respect to other departments. This is based on the principle that other department heads did not have the same opinion as yourself when it came to shortlisting applicants
David

What would a balanced department be?

Depending on the size of the department and the nature of the work undertaken it should contain a 60/40 or closer gender split, A wide range of ages. asuming that you have juniors and seniors. Depending on the geographical location a retrospective ratio of ethnic origins from the local community. However you may find that some companies only employ people who are of the same race and or religion as the majority of the staff, especially in the Asian community. Also government demands that employers who employ a certain number of personnel MUST employ a given percentage of disabled staff and when advertising for posts if they are under quota then preference must be given to these applicants first. I am not an HR person its just I have connections with these people.

David

Depending on the size of the department and the nature of the work undertaken it should contain a 60/40 or closer gender split,

Horse feathers... Hire who will do you the best job. ;)

I am not saying you shouldn't hire the best one for the job. But by natural selection it usually does come out as being 60/40 either way. It's just like flipping coins some heads some tails but do it a hundred times and the ratio is pretty even.

Having said that if you taught a monkey to perform a specific task and he would work for peanuts how would it feel working amongst a group of less educated humans? you have to consider the social acceptancy when determining your workforce, may not be nice but being nice does not pay the bills.

I thing I am beggining to sound like Colin now so I will beat a hasty retreat and leave the rest of this discussion to others.

David

Originally Posted by ColinEssex http://www.access-programmers.co.uk/forums/images/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://www.access-programmers.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?p=898268#post898268)
I wasn't aware that I knew you 25 years ago. Maybe you were one of the pillocks I rejected for interview. Did you ever live in Sussex?

Col

So the people you rejected are automatically pillocks:confused:

Doesn't follow. He rejected a number of people. Some of those rejected were pillocks. He asked if you were one of those. He didn't say that everyone he rejected was a pillock.

He could just as easily have asked if you were one of the tall people he rejected. Wouldn't mean that everyone rejected was tall.

... I will beat a hasty retreat and leave the rest of this discussion to others.

David

As will I. Just messing with you anyway - :)

David, if you did indeed have knowlege of the NHS, you would know that the Medical Records department is staffed mainly by females. In the 1980's, there were not the same monitoring standards as there are today, indeed departments didn't even have PC's. You should also have known that hospital trusts didn't appear until 1989 - prior to that, hospitals were financed by the Regional Health Authorities.

The overwhelming majority of applications were from females, that doesn't mean I employed solely females, in fact I took on a male with relevant experience and he went on to become a Medical Records Officer in charge of a department in another part of Sussex. Remember also that there were 3 million unemployed, so I got literally dozens of application forms for every vacancy.

I never said I didn't employ ethnic minorities either, I said I rejected those not born in the UK, my department had a mix of a few Asians, but in Sussex, the populace is more inclined to be white British as opposed to say, Leicester which has a high Asian population. I also had a good range of ages, I said the average age was 22 so out of 150 there was a fair amount over 30 / 40 and 50+.

I agree with Ken, I employed the best I could for my department, I was never interested in making sure I had the right 'split' genderwise, or any other wise. If I felt an applicant could do the work, then I employed them, I couldn't care if they were orange with pink spots. Patients needed to be seen and treated, so I, perhaps wrongly in your eyes, focused on making sure the work was done accurately and efficiently in the best interests of the patients.

The modern HR department is not even comparable to what it was 20 odd years ago. That's why they never got involved in interviewing, they left it to me and my deputy to deal with.

Col

The modern HR department is not even comparable to what it was 20 odd years ago. That's why they never got involved in interviewing, they left it to me and my deputy to deal with.

Col

I think that's the way it should be

I take offense to being interviewed by someone from HR when they have no expertise in the job & just follow a script that means nothing to them

Sometimes the interviews are just a formality because the jobs have already given to somoene else but it needs to bee seen that the job was advertised & applicants interviewed.

Seems organizations that are required to meet quotas put these otherwise 'less skilled' people in places like HR, which perpetuates the issue... :p

Again I agree with Ken and also Groundrush.

Too much emphasis is put on the correct "mix" of staff rather than the most suitable candidate, also the interview being a formality to show the correct procedure is adhered to is very true. Many jobs in admin in the NHS are already "filled" long before the interview process even begins.

Col

Again I agree with Ken and also Groundrush.

Too much emphasis is put on the correct "mix" of staff rather than the most suitable candidate, also the interview being a formality to show the correct procedure is adhered to is very true. Many jobs in admin in the NHS are already "filled" long before the interview process even begins.

Col
It's not just the NHS.

Someone at my last company told her secretary to schedule interviews for a certan job, for ten people, over the course of a week. The secretary asked what paperwork she wanted prepared beforehand (CVs, reference letters, etc.) and was told not to bother with any of it, as the job was going to a guy from the production floor. They had to go ahead with the interviews, as union rules said that they weren't allowed to give a job to anyone - however perfect for the job he was - without interviewing external candidates, put forward by the union.

I think that's the way it should be

I take offense to being interviewed by someone from HR when they have no expertise in the job & just follow a script that means nothing to them

Sometimes the interviews are just a formality because the jobs have already given to somoene else but it needs to bee seen that the job was advertised & applicants interviewed.

We had a young man working for us on a long term contract. They decided to make the contract permanent and that they should interview him amongst others for the post. Remember, he was interviewing for a development post to build on the software he had been solely building for almost two years. He didn't get the job because he didn't have "sufficient experience to work with our company." When he left, he went to work for Microsoft and now works in their Seatle branch developing Windows.

I suspect the NHS is little different to any other branch of Government.

What criteria do you use when you select for interview?

Col

I don't hire women at all.
They are usually prettier than I and I find that offensive.

I don't hire women at all.
They are usually prettier than I and I find that offensive.
How about those males that have undergone a gender change?;)

Sadly there are a lot of people who are living in their glory days of the past. They are wishing it was the way that they felt more comfortable and secure while they performed their menial duties in a mediocre fashion. New reality is that if you are hiring people you need to hire for now and today. You need to hire the best without any prejudice to what would reside in a closed mind with narrow thinking and false securities. The number of people seeking a single employment as a career is decreasing, this also puts a lot of talent to mine from in the marketplace.
Globalization is going to squeeze everyone which thinks that the old ways of conducting business were best practices. First and foremost purpose in business is to make money and not to create a warm feeling or dreams of grandeur or any other sentiment. The emerging economies have a larger labour base and the individuals who are working in these countries are willing to sacrifice more of themselves then most people would even have happen in their worst employment oriented nightmare.

Sadly there are a lot of people who are living in their glory days of the past. They are wishing it was the way that they felt more comfortable and secure while they performed their menial duties in a mediocre fashion. New reality is that if you are hiring people you need to hire for now and today. You need to hire the best without any prejudice to what would reside in a closed mind with narrow thinking and false securities. The number of people seeking a single employment as a career is decreasing, this also puts a lot of talent to mine from in the marketplace.
Globalization is going to squeeze everyone which thinks that the old ways of conducting business were best practices. First and foremost purpose in business is to make money and not to create a warm feeling or dreams of grandeur or any other sentiment. The emerging economies have a larger labour base and the individuals who are working in these countries are willing to sacrifice more of themselves then most people would even have happen in their worst employment oriented nightmare.


I wonder if they have quotas in the china sweatshops? :cool:

You need to hire the best without any prejudice . . . . .

How quaint.

You need to get out more and see what really happens. There are more prejudices these days than previously. Mostly brought on by stupid governments bowing down to every freak organisation claiming they are being victimised.

All that does is drives the same prejudices "underground" - in other words they are still as prevalent but not so obvious.

Col

You need to get out more and see what really happens. There are more prejudices these days than previously.

The Dutch government has nothing better to do so they are now discussing introducing a law that requires all companies of more than 250 employees to have atleast 30% upper level management be Women !! :eek:

Yes appearently there are more important things than the current crisis and/or nothing actually usefull for them to talk about

How about those males that have undergone a gender change?;)

They typically look better in a skirt than I do as well, so they're out.

They typically look better in a skirt than I do as well, so they're out.
The ones I've seen don't:D

The ones I've seen don't:D

You clearly weren't just seeing them for their looks then. A very mature attitude for a 21 year old.