Criteria for choosing interview candidates

ColinEssex

ColinEssex

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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.
 
ColinEssex said:
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
Click to expand...

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.
 
statsman said:
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.
Click to expand...

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
 
Fifty2One said:
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.
Click to expand...

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.
 
ColinEssex said:
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
Click to expand...

Aren't expectant fathers allowed a years paternity leave now under EU rules?:rolleyes:
 
Hes calling you a long standing dick. I'd be quite flattered! Better than short and flacid.
 
chergh said:
No, I consider my previous statement to be both clear and concise.
Click to expand...

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
 
ColinEssex said:
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
Click to expand...

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:
 
DCrake said:
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
Click to expand...

What would a balanced department be?
 
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