A Year Of Living Joblessly

This posting started out being entitled 'Joining The Ranks Of The Long-Term Unemployed' to mark my year without a full-time job.  However, incredibly I have been offered a job which starts today, 12 months to the day from when I was laid off by my previous employer.  Whilst I have been incredibly fortunate, after 80 job applications and 29 interviews to have escaped unemployment (for now) and stop the sale of my house, I still feel it is worthwhile reflecting on the impact being unemployed for longer than all the combined previous periods of joblessness in my life has had on me.

The latest figures I can find for long-term unemployed people, i.e. those without work for 12 months or more, date back to summer 2010, so with the recession having continued since then, I imagine they are higher.  The figure in July 2010 was 787,000 people, with 50% of unemployed people over the age of 50 falling into this category, the suggestion being that they will never work again.  I have heard that current figures are over 900,000 people, though cannot find hard data to support that.   In addition, it is claimed possibly millions of people are in part-time work as they cannot get a full-time job and so there is also a category of long-term 'underemployed' who are not able to contribute as much to the economy as they could and would like to do.

Anyway, as of today, I suppose I can count as long-term unemployed.  The last time I had a full-time job was 12 months ago.  Strictly I suppose I am not counted because I worked for a couple of days per week for a period of six weeks around the start of 2011.  However, it did nothing much to raise my household income.  I guess I will also not count because I am not claiming jobseekers' allowance.  I exhausted my contributions based payments back in December 2010 and because the woman who lives in my house runs her own business and works more than 24 hours per week, I am excluded from claiming incomes-based jobseekers' allowance.  It is for reasons like this that there is always a discrepancy between the number of people claiming jobseekers' allowance, currently around 1.45 million and the actual number of unemployed people, now 2.48 million, according to BBC figures.  This is because benefits tend to look at the household income so an unemployed husband/wife (or co-resident lumped into that category) or grown-up child living in a house with a man or woman working will often not be entitled to any benefit, but still be without work.  If it had not been for HM Revenue and Customs realising that they had made a vast mistake in the tax I had paid, then by now I would have had my house repossessed and guess I would be begging friends to sleep on their floor.  I certainly count myself one of the lucky ones.

What does it signify being long-term unemployed?  Well, the first thing seems to be that people feel free to treat you as if you are feckless or lazy or an idiot.  As has been discussed before on this blog, I think this varies depending on the area you live in, as in areas of high unemployment, it has to be a fact of life for lots of people.  Living in southern England where the recession is only steadily biting, and especially in a district where most residents seem to be self-employed, the Thatcherite attitude that you are only unemployed because you want to be, persists.  Without any knowledge of the vacancies available or what qualifications you need to fill them  people insist that there is work.  As I know from trying to get jobs in local shops, these days it is not an issue of being qualified but having a whole array of industry-specific qualifications whether to work in a baker's or as a travel agent or an estate agent.  With unemployment high there are always lots of people around that have such qualifications that I do not have and so I got knocked out of the running at the application phase, especially these days when so much recruitment is about matching requirements to the applicant's statements as the first phase.  If you do not have a 100% match then you stand no chance.  So you get told that there is work and then bewildered questions about what you are doing wrong turn quickly to condemning you for being flawed in some major way.

Though less common than it used to be, there often comes the suggestion of setting up your own business.  Given that we are in a recession and established businesses are folding every day and 50% of new businesses collapse within 6 months, I do not see this as an escape from unemployment, just a way to quickly lose whatever money you may have remaining.  In addition, if we were all budding entrepreneurs, would we not all be doing it anyway?  As programmes like 'Dragon's Den' show, even many people who think they are entrepreneurs are often sadly deluded and many more people get rejected even on that show, than win funding.  Why should it be any different in real life?  The laziness comes in the assumption that that is the answer for everyone, when in fact it is only the answer for a small minority and then only with luck rather than skill.

Ironically, whilst long-term unemployment is usually seen as being your fault, people also treat it like an infectious disease.  Unemployment defines my life as it has for the past 12 months.  I go nowhere, I talk to few people, so being out of work and applying for work are the key elements of my life.  Yet the moment you start talking about them, you get the 'I don't want to hear that' attitude, almost as if it is a contagion that through talking you will somehow blight that person's job.  This myth is one the government and employers like to perpetuate, that unemployment is the consequence of your personal actions.  If you have been dismissed for inappropriate behaviour, then, yes, that is acceptable.  However, very many unemployed people have been made redundant as a result of lay-offs affecting hundreds if not thousands of people.

We have minimal control over our working lives these days.  Unless we can go back in time and change which career path we went down.  When I started in my industry back in 1994 it was seen as a secure one which was going through a period of boom and now it is in crisis.  How could I have predicted in 1994 that instead I should have been taking travel agents' qualifications so I could still get a job in 2011? 

People say 'save'.  I have done this throughout my life.  I used up my first batch of savings covering my mortgage while unemployed for five months in 2009.  I have now used up my redundancy package and tax rebate paying it in 2010/11.  Of course, I had mortgage protection, but it does not apply if you are not claiming unemployment benefit and you cannot claim that if someone in your house works for more than 24 hours or you have been in fixed-term contract work.  I should have saved the premiums on paying for that insurance.  If I had got a job just 3 months after being unemployed or even 6 months, then I would be comfortably off and ready for when the next crisis hit.  We are only at the start of the government-augmented recession, we have years of this to go.  It took from 1979 to 1994 before the economy recovered last time, so on a tight estimate we have about until 2023 before we can breathe easily in the UK, perhaps longer given how severe Cameron has been compared to Thatcher in the damage he is intentionally doing to the economy for ideological rather than pragmatic reasons.  However, all that money is now gone, so next time I lose my job it is going to be very nasty.

Of course, I have not been lazy. I have now applied for 80 jobs which works out at 1.5 applications per week, below the level of 2 per week that the Department for Work and Pensions insists on. However, that average does not reflect the seasonal ebb and flow of vacancies and that in some weeks I have applied for 6 vacancies and in others none. In addition, applying for jobs these days is not just about sending in your CV. On average I write 5000 words per application, with some as long as 10,000 words. The longest, with 51 requirements, took me 8 hours to complete. In addition, as so many applications are done on unstable online application forms, I have probably re-typed many thousands of words again when the system has crashed and lost all that I have input. I lost two hours' worth of work last month because they system decided to drop out. Another even timed me out, after three minutes, before I had time to set my password for the application, then would not let me access or delete or replace the account which only had my name and address on. When I emailed the company I was told that a lot of people had had a problem with the online application. Why not get it fixed then?

I estimate I have written 400,000 words in applications, enough for four doctoral theses or a series of novels (I used to calculate things on the basis of an Agatha Christie novel, they were 60,000 words long, but these days they seem very short, so probably 120,000 is closer to the average). Of course, a lot of it is repetitive stuff and I still have no idea why companies want to know which 'O' levels I got in the 1980s, what grade I got for each of them and the precise day (not just the month or year, but the actual day) on which I was awarded the qualification. What difference does it make if I got a B or C in Chemistry 'O' level on 29th June 1984 for whether I am a good office manager or not?

I have had 29 interviews which works out at more than one every single fortnight.  Of course, they have not been spread out evenly and things like Christmas, Easter and the run of bank holidays, means they have been ill-distributed; on 4 occasions I have had 2 on the same day.  I have applied for jobs ranging from £19,000-£54,000, meaning, in fact my life could have gone down very different paths if I had got a job from one extreme or the other.  The same applies to where I will end up living.  The geographical bounds of my applications are now Southampton-Swansea-Edinburgh-Colchester, an area which covers a large chunk of the UK's population and economic activity.  In southern England, of course, it is distorted because a lot of the jobs in a particular circumference are actually in France and some UK employers seem reluctant to accept applicants from other areas.  One employer in Hertfordshire actually said to me 'we've never employed anyone from the other side of the M25' as if it was an iron curtain.  It is bitterly ironic when the phrase 'get on your bike' has returned to attack the unemployed with, you find employers who have a difficulty envisaging employing people who live elsewhere even within the South-East region.  Of course, being unemployed, you cannot be picky, you know you have to be willing to go anywhere and rent a shitty room in a house that you have had to compete with six others to secure in order to get work.  Quality of life does not even come near the equation.

The biggest problem for me being long-term unemployed is the fear.  Having already lost my house and the career I once had, I worry how much longer this can go on and how much worse it can get.  Employers are reluctant to take on the long-term unemployed as if they have succumbed to their disease and are now incurable of all the bad habits that unemployment instills in people.  They do not understand that we are so desperate we are willing to work for poverty wages, wherever they choose and dare not question whatever outrageous demands they may make.  That is the impact of 12 months' lashing with the whip of unemployment.  I am doubly cursed now because I am over 40 too.  An article recently said employers see the over-40s as lacking energy and being fixed in their ways.  This is ridiculous, I have had to adjust so many times in my life, I have worked for four different employers at times, that I am honed in the art of being flexible and adjusting the work changes.  As for energy, I have never rolled in hung over like many in their 20s, I do not spend time texting my friends or updating Facebook pages, in terms of productivity I will be better than someone 20 years younger.  However, of course, such prejudices are not challenged and in fact as attacks on feminism have shown, in many ways, prejudice in terms of what you are is again acceptable, just as David Cameron and his supporters have desired.

Stretching out in front of me is an ongoing path of uncertainty.  Will I still be unemployed this time next year?  How much poorer can I get?  I know there will be loads of disappointment.  I have been rejected 28 times from interviews and another 51 times been told I was not even good enough to get there.  Every piece of feedback seems to contradict the one before.  Just recently I was told that I did not come across as sufficiently sympathetic to workers when apparently being overly-sympathetic was criticised in my last job.  Even now with work, nothing seems certain.  I have been incredibly lucky, but will always remain fearful that it will be short term.  I was laid off from my old job only 7 months after being appointed to it.

I am both weary of how long having no job went on for with no succees and retain a fear that this is the pattern my life will hold in the future especially as I progress further into middle age.  No-one seems able to offer practical help, they just seemed to be able to harangue me or avoid me.  Joining the ranks of the long-term unemployed does not permit access to a fraternity, rather you simply become classified a pariah.  Of course, I am grateful that I am now in a job, but I know that there are many hundreds of thousands of people in the UK in even worse situations with even less hope than me and I mourn for that and the long-term damage it is doing to the UK.

Will I Ever Work Again?

As regular readers know, since the start of June, I have been unemployed.  My unemployment benefit based on my national insurance contributions has now run out.  I could apply for benefit based on my income as it is now so low, but hit a stumbling block.  Owing to the fact that the woman who lives in my house runs a business, even though it made a loss last month, and works on it more than 24 hours per week, this is too much for the Job Centre and they say that the household income will be too high for me to claim benefit.  This seems to stem from their belief that everyone working earns at least the minimum wage each hour.  Of course, with the self-employed, some months (and currently many months) you actually lose money.  However, because she works too hard to scrape together her income, I cannot claim benefit any longer.

As of yesterday I had applied for 65 jobs in that time and have attended 18 interviews; I have another one next week. The average application form requires around 5,000 words, the most complex one needed 10,000 words, which took me 8 hours to write.  I estimate that since June I have written over 320,000 words in applications, equivalent to more than three doctoral theses or five novels of the length Agatha Christie wrote.  My 'hit rate' had improved moving from 1 interview for every 5 applications to almost 1 for every 3 by the start of December.  However, I still have no job.  In some cases the feedback from the interview (forthcoming from about half of the interviews I attend) has made it clear that I stood no chance because a local candidate, 'someone who could draw on specific examples from this company', was in line to get the post.

To some degree I think I am now also facing gender discrimination.  Almost all the jobs I have applied for are in offices with at least 10 female workers for each male one.  One even admitted that they had a 'token man'.  I am not saying that the discrimination is apparent to the interviewers, but we all know that there is a tendency for people to recruit people like themselves and to recruit the 'face that fits' in the office environment.  With 90% of the staff, female, it is clear that in so many offices, I am not like the interviewers or the bulk of their staff.  Consequently, with so many candidates to choose from, this is going to be another factor which makes it close to impossible for me to be appointed.  It is ironic as being a child of the 1970s I am far more of a feminist than many of the women coming out of universities today.

I have noted 'The X Factor' approach used by one company which meant I was sent home even before reaching the interview stage.  Fascinatingly, a lot of interviewers end their feedback saying they are sure that I will find a post soon.  I have been hearing that since early June.  I believe they are simply assuaging their own discomfort.  Many of the people who have interviewed me have been very poor at the job and being British, in most cases, are not good a giving people bad news.  Conversely, some have been more than happy not simply to reject me, but to send me three page reports outlining everything that I did wrong and even accusing me of having lied on my application form.  They have done this on their own iniative as usually it is down to the Human Resources department to tell you that you have not got the job.  Given such harsh feedback, I have gone on two training courses run by the Department of Work & Pensions, helping people with interview technique, I even attended an 'executive level' session.  However, this does not seem to have helped.  At the last interview at which the panel asked what seemed to be straight forward questions, they kept correcting my interpretation of the question, saying I had misunderstood.  After a while I almost felt like leaving before the interview had finished, as it appeared that how they used language and how I use it, were so far apart that I would be battling to say anything that they felt was relevant. 

I have now taken additional guidance from a retired personnel manager who said that however complex the interviewer's question might be, I should not respond in kind.  He said that I must do a kind of 'verbal Powerpoint' presentation and stick to four statements at most.  He advised me that a huge error on my part was to give any context; I should not say, 'at my last company they had a hierarchical management system which meant that...', I should just respond, 'I can do...'.  It does not make me any better or worse a manager, but it is clear that I am still not dancing to the interviewers' tunes in the way they insist (though, of course, never tell you).

Feedback has been contradictory.  I have been told that I am 'insufficiently blue sky' and then that I was 'insufficiently hands-on'.  I have been told that I am applying for a job 'below' my 'level' (even though one of these posts was exactly the same as the one I was made redundant from in 2009) or aspiring too high for other posts.  It seems that unless my last job was exactly the same level as the one I am applying for then I am ruled out almost immediately.  I cannot say, 'just give me the job, I will work at any level you want', because you have to continue the pretence that somehow employment is much the same as it was last year.  If, after the interview, you outline how challenging the situation is, you hear that all-too-common phrase these days 'I don't want to hear that'.  I do not want to hear it or face up to it, but I have to, because it is the truth, that is what is happening to people, no matter how much you may wish to keep believing it is different. 

The sense that unemployment is somehow 'contagious' seems to have reappeared and the 9-year old boy who lives in our house, is now finding friends are not allowed to come round, as if there was a red cross on our door saying 'unemployment victim; stay away'.  Do these parents think I will rob their child or press him to work in our house?  I know it is irrational and the people themselves could probably not explain why they behave that way, but it certainly feels like them kicking you when you are down.  The only thing that makes life tolerable in such a situation is good interaction with people and anyway, the boy is not to blame for my joblessness, so why should he be punished?  You can see why sociologists investigating the 1980s talk of how it blighted a generation; not those out of work, but the children in jobless households.

I am a friendly, one could say, avuncular, manager.  A lot of that stems from my personality, but also because I know that if people feel trusted and that their knowledge and skills are respected, then they tend to work for the best.  I really believe that keeping people informed about what is happening in the company is the way to get them engaging with it and working well.  However, I dare not outline my approach to management any longer as it is clearly out of fashion.  At the last interview, disparingly, one of the panel told me that my approach was clear.  I am now certain that I will have to begin lying and begin to portray myself much more as a manager to harangues his workforce and keeps the flow of information to them very restricted.  The 1980s style of management is back in fashion, very clearly.  This is ironic as staff are aware how treacherous the current economic situation is and that their jobs are often at risk, they do not have to be keep being told it.  Nervous staff do not take the initiative and conceal errors rather than revealing them in time to have the situation rectified.  At the last interview, even haranguing, was not felt to be enough and there was an eagerness somehow to use regulations as a way of managing staff rather than setting the parameters.  Even if the economy suddenly improved tomorrow, the negative consequences of these troubled times are going to impinge on the work place for years to come.

People say I should be trying to get other jobs.  Everyone assumes that you can always simply apply for a job in a shop or some manual labouring post.  As it is, I am applying for jobs with a salary less than 45% of the level that I earned before.  I have applied to shops and have found constantly that I lack the NVQ or the ABTA or other professional qualification that is taken as the basic level for entry into so many posts.  I was lined up for a 3-month temporary post, via a temporary employment agency, at a company 45 Km away.  However, before I could simply take it up, five other people came forward and they implemented a formal interview process. 

This situation will not improve in the new year.  At the local job centre, both of the two staff I have been handled by in the past six months have told me they will not be employed there after the end of December and it seems that quite a few of their colleagues are on fixed-term contracts which will not be renewed for 2011.  The first influx of public sector redundancies will begin flowing into the jobless pool.  I imagine a lot of them are already applying for other jobs anyway.  I have not seen any increase in private sector jobs; even the usual increase of seasonal work seems muted.  The job centre staff believe that locally, due to the number of retail jobs in the area we will experience higher than average lay-offs in the new year when the 20% VAT comes into force, though other people have commented that it might not be that bad. 

I am 43 and am competing with people who are younger, can understand what an interviewer is asking and have a range qualifications that are demanded.  My house is up for sale though with the prices falling I may come away from this house with no money left over even to rent a flat, separate, of course, from the woman from my house due to her job.  I will be dependent on my family, and it really seems a retrograde step, moving back in with your parents aged 43, but the only other option seems to fall on the mercy of the council and beg a place in a bed-and-breakfast.  Of course, there will have to be a furniture and book sale at my house to get rid of all that we have gathered in this house.  It seems ironic that 1-2 years ago, I was looking for my career to take the next step and was ironically optimistic that it would.  Now, I would be happy if I could get a job in a shop over Christmas.  It is at least 21 years until I can retire, probably longer by the time I am in my 60s.  Given how hard it is proving to find work, even now before the worst of the economic depression has kicked in, is there any chance of me working again?  I keep applying, I keep pretending at interviews that everything is going fine, but after so much effort and so little success, I do wonder whether I will still be unemployed this time next year or even longer term?  My career seems to have been snuffed out so very quickly.  Despite that, happiness is compulsory, and you are not allowed to appear disheartened let along disgruntled or depressed even at the job centre.  David Cameron's objective of measuring our level of happiness seems, in that light, to be very sinister and I am reminded of rank upon rank of smiling faces marching past Chairman Mao.

The future for me seems now to be not the steady career of rising through office management over the next two decades, but rather scrabbling around with the other middle-aged, washed up managers trying to beg a job.  I know that I am going to have to work very hard not only to understand the ever-changing tricks of the interviews but to remember when a complex question is thrown at me, to respond with bare-bones answers.  I also must pretend to be a much harsher, aggressive manager.  However, there is no certainty that even if I master these things, that years of unemployment do not lie ahead of me.

The 'X Factor' Approach to Job Interviewing

The 'X Factor' is one of those programmes that even if you have never watched an episode you are aware of it through the cultural ripples it makes.  It is the most enduring of the talent shows (having started in 2004) that have been on British television over the past decade amongst others being 'Pop Idol' (2001-4) and 'Britain's Got Talent' (2007-).  Such programmes are revivals of the 1970s shows 'Opportunity Knocks' (1956; 1964-8; revived 1987-90) which had the public vote for acts and 'New Faces' (1973-8; revived 1986-8) with a panel of judges, which 'discovered' a number of comedy and music acts that have persisted.  Basically all of these recent programmes, whilst combining judges and popular votes, unlike the older shows, have open auditions that allow members of the public to come in and perform in front of a variety of 'celebrity' judges who then decide whether they proceed to the episodes of the show in which the public vote and whittle down the contestants to a final winner.  A lot of people enjoy the early stages of the programme in which members of the public, often with minimal entertaining talent but general a lot of self-confidence perform.  In many ways they particularly enjoy the ridicule element and especially cutting remarks from judges like Simon Cowell who has made a fortune through his involvement with the programme both in the UK and USA; versions have been produced across the World.

The trouble with the popularity of such programmes is that their methods seep into our everyday behaviour.  Often this is through catchphrases, such as 'you are the weakest link, goodbye' from the quiz game show 'The Weakest Link' (2000-) in which contestants vote off their opponents, or 'is that your final answer?' or 'do you want to phone a friend/go fifty-fifty' from the quiz game show, 'Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?' (1998-).  Those these programmes stem from an American approach to game shows and have prospered in the UK, their versions across the world, for example 'Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?' is seen in one version or another in 100 countries, also propogates the attitudes that the programmes require.  Certainly in 'The Weakest Link' players have to think tactically to go with the trend of other contestants' voting but also eliminate their toughest rivals.  Such devious thinking has been taken further in programmes like 'Golden Balls' (2007-) and the briefly running 'Shafted' (2001; axed after 4 shows) bizarrely hosted by former MP Robert Kilroy-Silk in which players had to cheat and lie to beat other contestants to the money prizes.  I have noted the impact also of 'The Apprentice' (in UK, 2005-) which masquerades as a business show but is in fact just another game show in which contestants try to outdo each other in business-related tasks and someone is eliminated each week. 

These are entertainment shows and you may argue that they are harmless.  However, it is important to note that not only their catchphrases but their attitudes which penetrate our society.  The sense that you can only succeed by pushing down others can be seen as an element of a capitalist society, but that is not necessarily the case.  Certainly that kind of behaviour in the workplace is not going to benefit the company in the long run.  Ambition is a good characteristic in the workforce but is very wasteful of time and resources if it is unbridled and sees success only be embarrassing or restricting workers around you, who, are, in fact trying to do their best for the company.

Where I have seen the greatest penetration of 'X Factor' behaviour is in terms of job interviews.  I guess this is not surprising given that the programme seems to have an effective way of filtering out large numbers of applicants down to a number of half-decent ones.  With unemployment rising and companies often having little idea how to sift among numerous applicants whilst not falling foul of anti-discrimination legislation, they are unsurprisingly falling back on patterns of behaviour they have seen on television.  Regular readers of this blog will know that recently I applied for a job which had 51 essential requirements in its specification.  It took me 8 hours and 10,000 words to respond to each of these.  Of course, many of the requirements were duplicated, but despite me raising the huge number, 3-4 times more than for other comparable jobs, the company sniffily said it had elicited a strong field.  Looking around the six candidates that did not seem to be particularly the case.  Two of the candidates were internal, and one said that she felt she had only been brought in to make up the numbers.  The others seemed fine but not overly strong candidates for what was a senior position.  I suggested to the company that people unlike me, unemployed, and currently working in similar roles would not find time in the short period between the job being advertised and the deadline falling (many companies in my sector allow only 5 days now) to complete such an application.

Anyway, how did they decide to cut down even the six that they had called (I was going to say 'for interview', but as you will see it did not turn out to be as I and others expected)?  Well, they asked us to do a presentation.  This is a very normal part of the recruitment process and, as I have noted before, even with the use of Powerpoint declining candidates are usually invited to present on some big issue for the company.  Taking the often very lengthy title and shaping it into something you can cover in ten minutes is a challenge, and not really one that matches the kind of skills you will need in the job if you get it.  However, it is a ritual and you have to do it.  Often it is a lottery.  In my experience one employer wants minimal detail and the next wants much more.  I have been told that I should not refer to my past experience but point to developments in the future.  I thought I had done that and was then told not in sufficient detail.  If I could predict the future that accurately I would still be doing the lottery.  Another classic one recently was that in my presentation and interview I did not refer to examples from that company's current work.  Given that I have not worked there since 2001 when it was under a different name, if I had known that much about it, it would be verging on industrial espionage; of course, it was just an excuse to recruit the internal candidates, increasingly the common way to cut down the numbers.

Back to the presentation.  Usually this is the precursor to the interview whether immediately or later in the day.  However, in this most recent example it has become very much like an 'X Factor' audition piece.  In contrast to (most) interviews (still, fortunately) after 15 minutes you were judged and an hour later told if you got through to the next round, i.e. the interview.  Not being clairvoyant I failed and was sent home, not having been interviewed.  I made a round trip of 440Km and stayed overnight, on top of the huge application form I had spent a day completing, all for 15 minutes and some sandwiches, not even a cup of coffee. 

I had been invited to a process like this last year, even more abrupt: after 10 minutes of presentation to a panel not of specialists, you would be told to stay or go home.  That would have involved a round trip of 512Km and another overnight stay.  I had planned to go by train but to get a decent price on train tickets you have to book a precise time slot on the train so I would have been gambling if I got through the first phase in the morning or whether I would need to stay in the city until 15.30 or even 17.30.  It was not a gamble I was going to take and I withdrew my application.  Given the amount you have to write on the applications and the fact that many employers take up references before the interview you would think they had more to judge you on than how you can come across in a presentation.  Misinterpret the title (which on more than one occasion has been sent to me with words misspelt) or not have local examples and you are out, just as if you sang off-key because you were nervous at an 'X Factor' audition.  Signing on at present I cannot refuse to attend any interview I am called for, but I certainly would not have put in the effort to get to the 'interview' if I knew in fact I was there to perform for just 15 minutes; I would have 'broken down' on the way or got stuck in some of the numerous road works on the UK's motorways at present.  However, no indication was given that this 'X Factor' approach was to be used, and so, like a fool, I thought I would actually be properly examined not ruled out on the basis of not taking the same interpretation of the title as the panel.

I am an experienced manager who has a range of skills and knowledge which would benefit many companies.  I never pretend to be something I am not, I certainly make my approach to management very clear and I do not lie about my experience.  However, I can see no way to get a job in such a context, despite all the interview training I have received and the fact that, in the past, I have both trained people in how to give presentations and have been highly praised for presentations I have given.  With the 'X Factor' methodology being apparently accepted as a legitimate way to select candidates, it seems that these things count for nothing and I should instead be having radical plastic surgery and learn how to juggle so that I can win through what is now little more than an entertainment/game show format for recruitment.

P.P. 15/04/2011
I have now done 25 interviews in 10 months.  Whilst unemployment has risen during that time, some companies seem to be coming to their senses about job applications.  Given that the jobs I go for typically have 70-100 applicants for every post (I am often told the precise number who applied) companies are realising that if they list 30-50 requirements then it is going to take someone in their company hours to read the application forms and so specifications have dropped back to 15-25 per job.  Of course, I know some industries come down to selecting application forms at random, but as yet, it does not appear that they are doing that for the level of job I am applying for.

The other thing that dawned on me, when for the fourth time I saw a vacancy advertised that I had been interviewed just a few months earlier, that too many companies see a successful interview as a skill in itself.  I guess I was picking up on this when I first wrote this posting.  However, it is only as it has become apparent that whoever they employed in at least four of the jobs I went for, moved on in less than 12 months, I realise that they clearly did not get what they wanted from the recruitment process.  In addition, feedback from a number of interviews has made it clear that I did not get the job because I lacked the skills and expertise required to do the actual job, but just because I pitched myself wrongly in the interview, coming across as too practical in one, too theoretical in another; too confident in one, lacking in confidence in another.  However, the judgement has been on the interview itself, not what the interview revealed about my ability to do the job.  I think this is a key problem, too many companies assume that being able to perform well in interview is somehow a guarantee that you are suited to the job.  They have forgotten that, in fact, an interview should be the process in which you find out more about the applicant.  It seems ironic to judge people on their success in interview when the job will often not involve doing anything like that ever again.  For too many companies, an interview is no longer a process for gaining information it has simply become a competition with someone 'winning' the job for completing the contest.  Consequently, a few months down the line, the company actually finds out that the person best at interviews is not necessarily best in the post, hence the rapid re-advertisement.  You do wonder if the company has changed its attitude sufficiently not to keep making the same mistakes.  Interviews are a tool not an end in themselves!

Managing Time at Work: The Challenge of Presentations

As regular readers will know, I have recently been applying for jobs.  Having been made redundant twice in a year, I have been able to consider how the economy has deteriorated in the 12 months of Summer 2009 to Summer 2010.  One thing that is immediately apparent is that the job situation has worsened.  It is not only that the number of unemployed people has continued to rise steadily, but also that the return of the 'whip' of unemployment seems to be encouraging employers to depress pay and demand longer working hours.  I noted back in July 2008 how employers were feeling that the workforce was becoming lazy because it was not fearful enough of losing jobs.  See:  http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2008/07/unemployment-as-whip.html In my last job I encountered a manager who loved to respond to any request from the workers that they were lucky to have a job and encouraged all the managers around and below her to do the same. 

Compared to a year ago almost every managerial position I have seen advertised is paying below the national average UK annual salary of £31,300 (€37,663; US$45,547) though it varies across the country from £21,550 in South Wales to £46,462 in London.  The bulk of these managerial jobs are offering £18,000-£23,000 per year  (€21,659-€27,675; US$26,193-US$33,469) despite being located in the South-East England region where the average salary is £32,819.  In addition, in contrast to last year there seems to be a sudden upswing in jobs demanding 'unsocial' hours or evening and weekend working.  This implies that the companies are short staffed or that the bosses somehow want to squeeze more out of their managers (and Heaven help the non-managerial staff) effectively reducing the hourly pay rate by simply imposing longer working hours.  Of course, all of this smacks of the 1980s.  The employers have got back the 'whip' and are cracking it with force. 

Saying all this, I guess readers from across the USA may be wondering what I am complaining about.  There unemployment is nationally 20% meaning around 60 million people are without work, almost the same number as the entire population (including children) of the UK.  Of these two-thirds have no unemployment insurance and ironically in the land supposedly of entrepreneurialism and the small business person it is often the self-employed who are most vulnerable.  I must say that throughout my life I have been a strong advocate of democracy, but have come to believe now, that there is no democracy in the UK or the USA.  Even when politicians want to combat the greed of the ultra-rich they find they are unable to do so.  Then under President Bush in the USA and now under David Cameron in the UK, we have policy makers who strive to further benefit the wealthy at the expense of the ordinary person.  I always looked on those who sought the overthrow of the state as foolhardy but as I age and see how the ordinary person is not even allowed to keep the meagre gains made in recent years, there seems no other solution that will give a chance to more than a small elite, however capable you might be.  It was interesting to read that the Walton family behind the Wal-Mart chain in the USA (they own Asda in the UK) alone has as much wealth as the poorest 40% of the US population, i.e., around 120 million people.  It shows you how petty your own savings and even the funds of governments are compared to those of the ultra-rich on this planet.

Anyway, my despair at the smashing of the UK economy driven by pigheaded, discriminatory economics, is distracting me from the focus on today's posting.  I am glad to note, that whilst job specifications seem to have reduced the number of requirements they set out, dropping in many cases below 15-18 requirements (compared to the 20-36 range I had last year; the peak being 36 essential and 10 desirable requirements for one post), they still seem to include many of the same sort of things.  Perhaps the detail has decreased, for one job I applied for recently the final essential requirement was summed up by a single word 'Flexibility' ('yes, I can touch my toes!').  However, new, pretty discriminatory, stuff seems to be slipping in: 'Must have the health to be able to cope with the rigours of this job'; it was not a vacancy as a mountaineering trainer simply an office manager, which does raise questions about working conditions in the company.  A perennial is 'time management' and that is the one I am going to focus on today.

Time management constantly seems to be something that bosses demand but seem incapable of doing themselves.  In many ways it is another coded signal that their company is under-staffed and they will be expecting you to work beyond the stipulated working hours.  I must say I have noticed that all reference to 'family friendly' employers has evaporated entirely.  Of course, employers want people who do not prevaricate and complete by the deadlines, but there is something more in British working culture which contrasts, say, with that of Scandinavian countries.  It is the assumption that if you are not working long hours you are not working hard enough.  I was warned once that in Sweden it is seen differently, that someone who is working after normal hours is inefficient because they cannot get their work done in the allotted time.  As a manager I see it this way.  I accept that there may be occasions of special demand when people need to work longer, but if I see them doing this day-after-day then I am concerned either that they have been allocated too much work or that they are out of their depth with the work and may need to be substituted, have more training or be allocated stuff that is within their capabilities.  I know from my previous job that such views are heresy and instead as a manager I am expected to see workers as inherently lazy, always trying to get out of working and having no pride in their work.

Of course, with social networking sites, email and even online poker, it is easy to while away your time appearing to work and yet not doing anything constructive.  Yet, all managers are alert to these things and any with an gramme of experience knows what to look out for.  My last two teams were so utterly terrified of appearing not to be working hard enough they dared not even speak to their colleagues and their relief when I encouraged them to talk to one another was visible.  In fact it quickly revealed duplications and different methodologies which could be standardised which had not come to light because the workers had been afraid of talking with each other for fear of seeming to slack.  There are lazy workers but they are not hard to spot.  Workers who are working in fear do not work well, but that is not from laziness, it is because a well-trained worker who has clear instructions and the ability to raise questions is always going to be more confident and in fact far more productive. 

When I talk of Aesop's Fable of the Wind and the Sun, no-one seems to understand it.  Aesop lived around 620-564 BCE and if he could get a handle on principles that are still applicable to today's workplace then managers of today can.  In the analoguos story the Wind bets the Sun that he can make a traveller remove his coat.  The Wind blows and blows but the traveller hugs his cloak ever more tightly to his body.  Then the Sun takes his turn and shines brightly on the traveller who immediately removes his cloak, so the Sun wins.  Having had enough management books based on the works of Sun Tzu's 'The Art of War' (probably written at the same time as Aesop was working, perhaps some decades later) maybe it is time to produce one based on the work of Aesop.

Of course, time management does not simply apply to day-to-day work and it is in connection with presentations that I have seen it fail the worst.  I seemed to go through a spate of colleagues in the early 2000s who seemed to have no control over their timing when making presentations.  In that era, Powerpoint was at its zenith (released in 1987, certainly in the UK it do really rise to its height of usage until the mid-1990s), though despite it having been in popular usage in business for many years few people seemed to know how to use it conceptually though they could so technically.  Perhaps I will do a posting on the worst Powerpoint presentations I have ever seen, but for now will refer to it as an element of poor time management in presentations. 

I had a manager who had no idea of how long anything took.  Unfortunately she was responsible for scheduling a number of conferences in a year.  In her scheduling there was no room for anything to go wrong.  There was no slack for technical faults or a person over-running with what they said (which, of course, happened regularly, because like her, they were poor at managing their time).  Every year the schedule would be sliding after the first speaker and by the mid-morning break it could already be 30 minutes off target.  Such a slide leads to things being dropped from the programme and from questions (usually the most useful part of any business presentation) being suppressed. 

One problem was that this manager had no idea how long her own presentation was going to take and generally as she opened the conferences, this meant that they were already behind schedule after she had made her introductory speech.  Usually she scheduled 10 minutes for herself and speak for 20 minutes.  Having sat on interview panels with this woman, I know that she believed that a question about time management was to ask specifically what piece of software the candidate used to manage their time.  She asked this obsessively, providing no benefit to the interviewing process.  Software dates quickly and just because a person uses a piece of software does not mean they are using it correctly or in fact has engaged with the mental principles behind more than just superficial use of it.  She never made any efforts to find out how much she could say in the time she allocated herself.  I know that I speak 5000 words in 60 minutes at a steady but not rushed pace, with time to point to things on the screen.  So, if I am allocated 20 minutes, I know I can say 1600 words and probably need to be looking at 1200 if I want a couple of questions asked.

Very few people in business, despite the fact that most of us have sat through tens, possibly hundreds of presentations in our careers, seems to remember that the change over between speakers is never lie a baton exchange in a relay race.  There has to be applause for the previous speaker, they have to move at least aside if not off stage and their successor needs to step up.  Even if their presentation is ready to go the moment they reach the lecturn (something I have never witnessed in my entire career) they need some time to get their head in gear.  Many times they or the assistants will struggle to get the presentation going.  This is why there seems no point in allocating anyone a 10-minute slot, easily a third of that time can be eaten up with just the human things of getting in place to speak and getting the graphics we seem to insist on, running.  (Saying this, the era of Powerpoint seems to be passing and I have had two interviews this year which have insisted that it was not used; in contrast to 2004 when I failed to get one job purely on the grounds that I had not used Powerpoint in the interview).

Another classic example was from a colleague of mine.  She worked in a department which had a very poor concept of time management on a day-to-day basis.  Deadlines would be set which had no bearing on reality.  This colleague would regularly fly from Luton airport to Edinburgh airport, returning the same day.  The time in the air was 1 hour each way, plus an additional 1 hour at each end for check-in, security check, boarding, etc.  So even if the travel went smoothly she would be travelling for 4 hours out of the day.  In addition she lived 40 minutes' drive from the airport, adding 1 hour 20 minutes to the journey.  Whilst in Edinburgh she would be in meetings all day, usually 09.30 a.m. to 4.30 p.m. or 5 p.m., so almost a working day.  Thus, in total, even if everything went smoothly, she would 'work' 11 hours 20 minutes (assuming she took 1 hour for lunch; often it was just 30 minutes or a 'working' lunch instead).  Any time away from the office is seen as a 'junket' and a treat whereas of course it can be tiring and I certainly witnessed her not breaking from work on the aeroplane or in the terminals.  Part of the reason for this soon became apparent because she was expected to deliver a report and make a presentation at 11 a.m. on the morning after each visit.

This rule even applied the day that the flight out of Edinburgh was delayed by 4 hours due to a fault in the aeroplane's rudder (or whatever the technical name is).  It was a noticeable incident because the aircraft had taxied out only to find it could not turn and had to be hauled back tail first.  In addition, we came back through Arrivals despite not having been any further than on to part of the runway.  A young man who complained, not particularly loudly was dragged off by security staff and we did not see him again.  Another interesting thing was that having got back into Arrivals having spent an hour on the runway loads of people's mobile phones went off, they were being called by irate taxi drivers at Luton booked to collect them, demanding why they were not there.  The passengers had to explain that they had not been permitted to use their mobiles while on the aircraft and it was clear that no-one at Luton had informed anyone about the delay. Anyway, we reached Luton sometime after 10 p.m. and my colleague drove home and managed to finish her report at 2 a.m. for presenting at 11 a.m. Of course, for some reason one of her managers could not make it in so it was postponed.  The detachment between the working norms and what happens in reality, plus the amount of sleep people needed, fostered an environment that was going to lead to disgruntled, exhausted employees and probably a far less good quality report than if the travelling colleague had been given, say 48 hours, to produce the report.

Anyway, despite  working for this very time demanding department, my colleague seemed to have little inkling of the implications of not paying attention to what can be realistically covered in the time scheduled.  She and I were asked to do a presentation about our project.  We were given 20 minutes between us and agreed to split this equally.  Very foolishly, I went second.  My colleague put up 38 slides which she would had to have covered in less than 16 seconds each if she had wanted to fit them in and, even then, that would not allow any time for questions.  Through rushing and skipping over some she managed to get through 19 slides in 19 minutes, leaving me a single minute for my section.  I had prepared 5 slides but did not even bother pulling these up.  I walked on and said simply 'the project worked well; people liked the software it created' which had been the nub of my section of the presentation, then stepped down.  The disconnection between the amount of data to be covered and the time needed to cover it, is astoundingly common.  Years later a senior colleague who even trained people in making presentations argued that more than a slide per minute was fine, even then not allowing any time for questions, which she generally expected.

I have run training on making presentations and right since I started my career I have been complimented on my ability to speak to time.  I am not smug about this and go back to first principles each time I prepare something.  However, with practice you get to know yourself and your material well enough to change pacing and content 'on the hoof', for example, if you realise people are not comprehending what you are saying or know less about it than you believed.  However, being good at these things can often work against you.  At one presentation I had 10 minutes to speak.  I produced 4 slides.  The first was the title of my talk and the fourth were my contact details.  This meant that I had 2 slides with the meat of the presentation each with 4 items on, allowing me about 1 minute per item (not per slide as is usually the case).  I delivered it in 8 minutes allowing some time for questions, but the audience simply sat there, seemingly stunned.  They had expected the spinning images and sound effects that had filled the presentations and clearly had not expected me to finish on time.  The half-embarrassed over-run with an excessive amount of data and slides has become such the norm that audiences now do not seem to be able to cope with anything actually done to time.  The same applies to audiences who want slides on the screen and also to have them replicated on paper in front of them.  The lecture worked for at least 3000 years before the invention of Powerpoint but it seems that business people have been seduced into requiring overload which actually communicates only a fraction of the message the presenter is seeking to deliver and often in a confused and harrassed manner.

Time mangement is a vital skill for business.  However, what is termed time management is really overworking and in fact real management of the time spent on tasks, and, in particular, the proper matching up of the time scheduled for an activity and the work which is to be done in it, is very poorly understood right across British business.  Pointing this out, though, is not going to win you any fans and, in fact, you will be looked upon as being peculiar.  Instead you will be compelled to adhere to the norms that expect over-running and incomplete presentation of the information.

The Headache of Online Applications

As regular readers know, I have recently been applying for jobs of all kinds in the hope that I can find work before I run out of money and my house is repossessed which I calculate will happen by December.  Compared to last year when I applied for 38 jobs, had 16 interviews and only received feedback from 3. In some ways the situation this year has got both better and worse.  Out of 35 applications I have had 7 interviews, and another due next week, all but 2 of the sets of interviewers this year have provided feedback.  The feedback was sometimes quite expected, i.e. they had a candidate already working for them who knows their business better than me and at other times it has been quite offensive, accusing me of having lied on my application form.  It does seem that my interview skills needed polishing and so I was lucky being unemployed that a local training centre gave me a free two-hour session.

Of course, in contrast to the past, interviewing skills are not the only ones you need to get a job.  Once you would simply send in a CV or complete an application form then hope to be called for an interview.  Then things moved from paper-based applications to electronic ones.  Saying that, in interviews Powerpoint seems to have passed its peak of the early to mid-2000s and people are now wanting presentations done by you simply speaking or using handouts at most.  The step from paper-based to electronic application forms was very much in my favour.  For some reason the way I wrote seemed to be either juvenile or threatening and it meant that I only got 1 interview for every 25 applications I put in.  Being able to complete the application in Word which generally came in, in the early 2000s for the kind of employers I apply to, meant my hit rate rocketed to 1 interview per 3-5 applications even though I was writing basically the same thing.  Now, of course, we have gone a further stage.  Rather than simply emailing your completed application, now you have to log on to the company's human resources website and complete the whole application online.

Application forms were not always best designed and sometimes you were desperately seeking the right place to put in good information about you.  Like all recruitment processes, they seemed obsessed with details that had no relevance for the job you are applying for.  Having completed my O Levels now more than 25 years ago, I do not really seem what impact whether I got a B or a C in Physics really has on my current skills and knowledge.  Furthermore, what significance is the date I was awarded that O Level or what the address of my school was back in the early 1980s?  Yet, time after time whether on paper or electronic forms I have to give all of this in detail.  Some take it even further and I had a ridiculous situation of being in an interview last year with a man sitting in the corner of the room comparing photocopies of my faded, typed certificates from the 1980s against all the originals.  I did not even get the job but the company insisted on keeping the photocopies for a year!  Why?  I have no idea.  To me it seems that many companies have little idea what they want out of their recruitment processes and so end up putting in these rituals as if they had some significance.

Now, I have commented on poor interviewing before, and today need to focus on the difficulties of online applications.  I am good at the applications, so much so that people are startled (sometimes angry) at how poor I appear in real life, hence them accusing me of lying on the forms.  I never bother to lie, there is no point: given how much trouble I get into writing the truth imagine the risks I would run lying.  However, interestingly, at two interviews in the past year I have been told that I am the only candidate to have completed the application form correctly.  This means that everyone else I have been up against has failed to do it right.  The forms may be repetitive and restrictive but they are generally not at all difficult to get your head round; the problems come from other sources, as I explore below.  Weirdly it seems I could still get interviews if I did my applications less well and it would help reduce the level of disappointment interviewers get when they question me!

The first issue that you encounter when trying to do an online application is the same as you encounter when trying to buy or pay for anything online, you have to log on.  For most of us these means setting up a new account.  However, having been unemployed so much recently, and applying for jobs with the same companies time after time, I kept getting told that I already have an account with that company and should use that, and, no, I cannot set up a new one.  Even when I have guessed how they see my user name, I have to try to remember the password they tolerated this time last year.  Of course, you can have them email you a reminder, but nowadays you are told that 'for security' there will be an intentional delay before the reminder is sent out, so you lose another 2 hours waiting for it to turn up in your inbox or more often your Junk box.  A plea to employers, please do not send out emails with simply 'HRdept' or 'HRServices' or 'Resources' in the email address; most email systems will send them straight to Junk immediately.  Get addresses that are more distinctive if you want them to get through.  So, finally you get to log in.  That is only the first hurdle, many more will follow.  I do wonder what is the point of logging in.  Going back to a company I had applied to for a different post a fortnight before I logged in and expected all the tedious details like my address, schooling and previous jobs to be remembered by the system.  It was clear that the account was working but had stored none of the information I had put in before so I had to go through right from the beginning once more typing in all the minutiae it requests.

A key challenge with online application forms seems to be the common mismatch between whichever department is recruiting the staff and the IT people who build the websites that you apply through.  Neither seems to be aware of how the other thinks.  Consequently I regularly apply for jobs with more than 25 requirements which I am expected to respond to and yet I read 'limit 4000 characters' sometimes with 'including spaces'.  Now, even if you use words no longer than 5 letters long that gives you less than 800 words to write.  This means you can only use 32 words per requirement.  You could basically type 'yes, I can do that' repeatedly, but certainly not 'provide evidence of your use of these skills'.  Typing in the name of one or two of the companies I have worked for uses up a quarter of my allocated words.  Of course the websites are generic for all sorts of roles across the company, but there is clearly no conversation between the web developers and the departments recruiting as to the amount of information the latter are demanding.  Of course, as I have noted before, many companies put far too many requirements for their jobs and they are often repetitive.  However, even if you halved it, to, say, 12 requirements, you would still have only 64 or fewer words and for most of the jobs I am going for, you need at least 200 words to say anything sensible (and, of course, many of the words will be longer than 5 letters).  A couple of the forms have further complexity.  Certain ones will not accept particular characters, difficult if you have ever worked abroad.  Some even do not accept common punctuation marks; one removed all the full stops, brackets and amphersands from my text.  It accepted full stops on some pages and not others and would not accept brackets anywhere, so some numbering had to be ended with a comma and some sentences simply with a space!  It seems no-one had tested the form using it in a way most people would.

Another key problem is pull-down menus.  Rather than allowing you to put in free text, increasingly it appears, you have to select from a long list.  Sometimes these lists seem unnecessarily extensive, I am not certain how many people entitled 'Lord Colonel' or 'Professor Reverend' the companies I apply to be employed by; even 'Sir' and 'Dame' seems a little too much.  In terms of towns and counties you seem to get a bewildering mix of locations 'South-End-on-Sea' rather than 'Southend' was one interesting option I saw.  Many of the towns seemed to be in the Russian Federation rather than the UK and the same applied to counties, many of which were located in India.  One one application form it seems they simply scooped up what people put on former applications, so one 'town' was a street address and Hampshire appeared both as 'Hampshire' and 'Hants' its old postal abbreviation.  If you leave these sections free text then people can put in their address no matter what country it is in.  When you reach the equal opportunities section, companies seem at a real loss as to which categories to put.  I think some intentionally are taking a dig at Nick Griffin who claimed there were no black Welshmen, as you can select 'White British' and even 'White Scottish' or 'White Welsh'.  As for mixed-race people you can tick a whole plethora of combinations.  The most genders I have seen is four (male, female, male to female transgender and female to male transgender); in my estimate they have left out hermaphrodite. I think the diversity information is useful to gather, but there needs to be real thought about drop down menus which make it complex especially as you have to search so far down the list to find 'United Kingdom' and you get so tempted to select a British dependency from further up the list instead.

The worst situation with the pull down menus, however, is on qualifications.  Of course, you are asked to put in everything you have ever studied even if it has no relevance to the job.  "Yes, I see you got a 'B' in Latin 'O' Level in 1981, excellent, that will really help with quality control of the production of our oil pipeline fittings'.  Then they do not have the qualifications you have studied from the list.  They have ever form of German doctorate you might want to take, but a lot of standard UK qualifications, especially professional ones, are missing.  Do you simply leave them off or stick them under some other category or try to get them into some free text part of the form?  I do not know, I have tried all approaches.  As UK companies recruit not only from across Europe but globally, it will be impossible to list all possible qualifications.  What does an engineer from Shanghai have on their list?  What about a call centre manager from Mumbai?  Can you list all the different qualifications?  Even if you tried you would have a list even more unwieldy and irrelevant than the current ones.  Again, it seems, that rather than being fit for purpose the choices are simply what someone on the website building team can think of.

The other key problem with online applications is how little time you get to complete them.  In recent days I have done one with a 20-minute time out and one with 30 minutes.  I know they do not want people staying logged into their system all day, but again there clearly has been no discussion between the web staff and the people recruiting.  Even if you do not have to type in every school, every employer and every training course you have attended since your birth, the requirements section, which, as I noted above, has an average of 25 things to respond to.  I cannot write anything coherent in less than 1 minute on each requirement.  The best online applications either save automatically periodically or allow you to save when you like.  At least then if you get timed out you (should) have a chance of logging in again and continuing.  Some of the functionality leaves a lot to be desired and the guidance shows how poorly the sites are designed.  One advised me to keep clicking forward on to the next 'page' and then back again (of course not using the browser 'Back' only the small misaligned one on the page) to ensure my answers we not lost. 

The worst, despite me logging in, timed me out having given me 30 minutes to answer 29 requirements that were to be put into 5 different groups on the website to the 7 groups they were in on the job specification.  Naturally I logged back in again and was frustrated to find that not only had I lost all the content on the page I had been working on, but that despite all the promises, all the content of the previous pages had gone.  I had to face typing in all my O Levels once again with no guarantee that I would not lose it all again.  The only solution was to mock-up the online form in Word and cut and paste (very quickly) the answers from each section.  I guessed it was worthwhile because given how difficult the website is to use, many potential applications are likely to give up reducing my competition.  However, what is the point of having an online application if the only way to complete it is to create your own form and copy over?  At least this online application allowed cutting and pasting, many disable that function meaning you have to type out every tedious bit of employers address or qualification again and again.

I know that with 70 applicants for every graduate vacancy, companies are seeking to reduce the number of applicants.  However, the online application forms which are now the norm for so many posts, seem simply to be poor and difficult to use due to the fact that the people building them have little idea what is required of them or how applicants will actually be expected to use them.  You get a good one only when the web designer has some experience of such forms and those that do seem very limited in number.  The general ignorance among so many staff about how websites work means they do not feel in a position to intervene or even ask for particular functionality.  There needs to be good dialogue between the recruiters and the web builders in a company as there should be between the marketing staff and the website builders.  People forget that often an online application form is the first real encounter a person who is considering working for you, has with the company.  On the basis of the bulk of (well, in fact almost all) the online application forms I have used, I would believe that UK companies are incredibly badly organised and have no control over their web presence; not something which is going to encourage me to work for them or, in fact, hire or trade with them.

'You're Not As Good As You Appear On Paper': The Interview Saga Continues

As regular readers will know for the second time in 12 months I am unemployed.  Having received a far better redundancy package this year I am not in as desperate situation as last year, but as the money drips away there is still the prospect of house repossession and the break up of the household I have lived in for almost five years.  This year for some reason, perhaps because of higher unemployment, the Department of Work & Pensions seems to be less concerned about my domestic arrangements and have decided to pay me some benefit within a couple of weeks rather than waiting almost three months to start doing so.  Even the council is paying me council tax benefit, though it has wanted a day-by-day account of all the economic activity of the people living in the house whether they want benefit or not.

One of the requirements of claiming unemployment benefit is that you apply for two jobs per week.  There is no specification what kind of jobs these should be.  You cannot limit yourself too narrowly in terms of type of work or location.  I have been looking for jobs over a 190 km radius.  Being keen to get a job, I have in fact been applying right outside my recent area of work, going into residential lettings, working for councils, work for colleges and civil service roles.  Unsurprisingly given how many redundant people there are anyway in those fields, I have not got a look in.  Some weeks I apply for jobs that I know I stand no chance of being interviewed for, just because there is nothing else to show me applying for that week.  Sometimes, as with an interview I attended a week ago, I get caught out and get invited to be interviewed for a job I have no ability in.  I have quickly learned that actually that is sometimes the point and the employers like a few hopeless candidates to make it appear to their bosses as if they are drawing from a wide field when in fact they have hardly anyone suitable or have already set it up to give the job to a friend.

Often the reason why companies have so few candidates is that they have set too many criteria that there is no-one alive who could fit all of them and certainly not for only £25,000 per year.  The number of criteria seems to have fallen in my experience, with last year's record being 36 Essential and 10 Desirable requirements to this year being 25 Essential and 4 Desirable, though you did have to write about each of these in five small boxes on a website within 30 minutes or you were timed out, so perhaps they are just introducing new ways to eliminate people.

In terms of my own industry, however, I have found myself rather too successful.  This should be heartening, but let me explain the problem.  I put effort in completing my application forms correctly, reading all the guidance and seeking to comply with it.  I try to answer every question on the form (some times very challenging when there is a limit on the number of characters and even spaces you can use in providing the answer) and do it drawing on evidence from my career.  Interestingly, at two interviews I have been told that I was the only applicant who filled the form in properly, so I do wonder how other people do it.  It appears that to a great degree this gives me an inappropriate advantage as I am called to interview not on my actual abilities but simply because I have complied with the process.

Despite this, more than 20 interviews on, I still have no job.  I beg feedback from the interviewers and after receiving none from a lot of companies I have been interviewed with, was surprised to get a spate of feedback recently.  The common theme was that 'in person you are not a fraction as good as you appeared in your application'.  The increasing implication is that I must be lying on my application forms.  One person went as far as to say that having met me it was clear I was utterly unsuited for the role that I had applied for and should not go for such roles again.  I have never lied on any application form in my life. In fact when having CV training back in 2005 I was told to play up skills and abilities much more than I do.  However, I keep it plain and simple and certainly stick to the truth.  In fact, given how restricted the space is for writing on these application forms, especially online ones, there is usually a lot more I could say if there was space.

When I get to the interview I try to respond to the questions as best as I can.  One key problem is that you are now supposed to answer complex questions and even scenarios put to you, in what seems like 2-3 sentences at the most whilst drawing on real life examples from your career.  This is something I have failed to master and I tend to give answers at least as long as the question and certainly long enough to address the issues being raised.  However, it is clear that somehow you have to get all of that into the head of the interviewers in fewer words than they have used themselves.  I have also learned that I have been under a misapprehension.  I assumed that if I saw the interviewers making a lot of notes that was a good sign, but fortunately due to the feedback I have now received, it is a sign that things are going badly, I am somehow 'diluting' the answers I give by adding too much.  So if they simply tick their sheet I should see that as good and shut up then.

Sometimes, of course, you realise that, in fact you are not suited for a job.  The last feedback I received said that first comment I had made was spot-on but then the issues I had gone on to were irrelevant to the answer.  From my side, the first comment was a throwaway one while I thought through the answer and what I moved on to was how I feel about the issue and how I see the right way to address it.  What the interviewer saw as me having weak interview skills in fact revealed to me that my approach was completely the opposite to what that company wants.  In many ways, in that case, the interview had done its job.  However, it is presented to me as someone who is bad at interviews.  Interviews are always about second guessing what the potential employer wants and there is no way to get it right every time.  However, my enthusiasm for my work, I now see, means I cannot shift position fast enough to bring what I am saying in line with the company's line, rather I say what I feel is the correct way to deal with an issue and the way I would do it and just have to be lucky if that happens to coincide with how the company sees it.  I am no better at mind-reading than the next wo/man.

I need to change my approach and quickly.  Not being a student or even recent ex-student, I have no access to interview training, which like CVs and everything else in recruitment seems to go through rapid changes in fashion.  If the Job Centre Plus was any use this is what they could be training me in.  It seems that it could get me off the jobless figures pretty quickly.  I seem, unlike many people, to have cracked the application form bit, it is learning how to be sufficiently chameleon-like in the interview so that at least they do not come out telling me I was wrong to have even applied and certainly raise the suspicion that if I am that unsuitable my application form must be full of lies.  Instead I am being sent to a session on my duties when I am unemployed, which I think by my weekly level of applications I am complying with.  I cannot magic more suitable vacancies out of the air and I do not seem able to get people in different industries interested in me at all.  The ironic outcome of all this is that I should begin to be less competent in completing my application forms, then at least if I am called to interview my performance there will not seem so out of step with what I have written on the form, so reducing the clear disillusionment on the part of the interviewers and the suspicion that I am a liar.

Hurdles to Getting Jobs from Tramlined Career Paths

Back in the 1990s I was travelling on a train from Waterloo, I think going to Surbiton. There were two businessmen in their forties talking with two Frenchwomen in their twenties. They were discussing (in English) the nature of employment in Britain and shared a common viewpoint that Britain was good for work because things were so flexible. One of the women asked if the men had read 'The State We're In' by Will Hutton (1996) which was the 'in' book at the time, a popular, serious book about the state of Britain before New Labour came to power. Of course, being British businessmen neither of them had been anywhere near a book on the economy or British society. Anyway, they were interested in why the women were in the UK. At the time it had been announced that there were 160,000 French living and working in London. She said it was because in France all careers were locked into particular paths. You studied the relevant qualifications at school and then went into that career. The tight link between specific qualifications and particular jobs meant it was almost impossible to change careers. She felt the UK was different allowing people to shift into fields in which there were vacancies at a particular time.

There has always been a drive to improve the quality of service that people receive in the UK and despite the British reluctance to ever engage seriously with vocational qualifications we have seen them increase, notably with the introduction of NVQs (National Vocational Qualifications) in 1986. Employers liked them as they could be done in the workplace meaning that their workers would not be taken away from them even for a day per week as was the case with qualifications such as City & Guilds. With increasing regulation over standards, notably in catering and residential care it allowed them to comply with such standards without feeling they were giving up anything much. You have to bear in mind that every time there is a bank holiday in the UK, employers whine publicly about the laziness of British workers when we have five fewer per year, i.e. a working week's worth, less than the next nearest country in the EU. We have not yet moved to the situation of Germany where there are schools and qualifications for waiters, but the past two decades have seen the UK edge in that direction.

Now, I am a strong supporter of education for all. I also think that we have seen great improvement in service sector provision, especially in hygeine and in care for residential patients. However, we have now begun to move to the tram-lined employment patterns of France. As regular readers know I have now been unemployed for three months so am beginning to look well beyond my previous employment for work, both geographically and in terms of nature of employment. Of course, you always run up against job specifications saying 'must have substantial experience' which means that unless you joined that profession at 16 you stand little chance. Software is also being put up as a hurdle, not simply the Office packages we can all access comparatively easily, but also things like SITS management information software, Prince2 project management software, PASW statistical analysis software are just a few examples. However, it is now reinforced by 'must have ABTA qualification' to work in a travel agency; 'must have NVQ2' - in an advertisement for a groundskeeper. Now even manual jobs need qualifications. All employers now assume that any worker must arrive fully trained in the specific packages they use, no matter if there are other packages out there, or be considered utterly useless. British employers never want to train their staff, they always want someone else to do it for them.

I am torn between wanting good quality service in service industries, which I acknowledge comes from training, and yet realising that there are scores and scores of jobs even comparatively low skilled ones for which I will never be able to apply because back in 1992 I did not take an NVQ qualification in warehousing and in 2003 did not persuade my employer to buy one piece of software rather than the one he bought. Of course, in a period of unemployment, these employers will generally find someone out there who does have the precise qualification and expertise they want. In smaller towns it might be less easy and of course the more caveats you put on a post the smaller you make your supply pool so you increase demand in relation to supply and force up the cost, i.e. the salaries to secure those workers. Having such refined requirements may make it easier for recruiters by reducing the number of applicants, but in fact increases 'frictional' unemployment, because it may be that the only people with the relevant NVQ are in the town 15 kilometres away. Perhaps a particular local college did not teach that software and yet the people in the next town do not want to relocate to your town for the job. I suppose in the old Norman Tebbit attitude they should then be compelled to 'get on your bike' and travel for work. Of course, there are probably more opportunities to retrain these days certainly than was the case in the 1980s, but retraining needs time and money and the bulk of unemployed people lack both of those things.

So, given that I am excluded from so many jobs by their qualification criteria let alone my lack of experience, what options am I left with? Basically, in my district, two. The first is to work in a call centre. I was struck by one advertisement which said the job requires you to make a minimum of 250 calls per day, which by my calculation means that in a 7.5 hour day you have to make 1.8 calls per minute! Maybe that is possible if you were trying to cold call sell double glazing but this company is involved in cold calling to get performance data from companies. I guess it will take you more than 30 seconds for the call to be answered and the telephonist to even direct you to the right department even before you can begin to try to persuade the company to tell you about their performance. Thus, the day, in fact must be far longer than 7.5 hours. I also love the names call centre jobs now have, such as 'Customer Retention Advisor' which is increasingly common, whenever you try to cancel a service you get put on to a member of staff who tries to persuade you not to leave. This is a whole wing of call centre staff now, alongside the cold callers and the standard customer service staff (even the Department of Work and Pensions has adopted this approach, you now call up to 'sign on' and the call centre worker goes through a lengthy script).

The other job vacancy in my district for which you need no experience is to be as an extra or an actor/actress in 'adult', i.e. pornographic movies. It even emphasises on the advertisement, that whilst you must be over 18 for the job (there seems to be no upper limit, I suppose under ageism laws they cannot set one), it does not matter if your sexuality is 'straight, gay, bi or tri...' I have no idea what a trisexual is, though I must say that on a job application for a company I completed the other day there were four categories under gender, the two traditional ones plus male-to-female transexual and female-to-male transexual; interestingly hermaphrodite was not listed, but I guess these days you would be compelled to go into one of those transexual categories, even if you are not actually moving in one direction or the other.

Repeatedly coming up against qualification, software and experience is frustrating as what I had seen as the safety net of taking an low-skilled, low wage job is effectively barred to me in a way it was not back when I was last unemployed in the early 1990s. Employers can be choosy at present, but in time when employment increases they need to shake off the assumption that they have no responsibility for the training of their staff and that everyone must know the business precisely and what particular software the company has selected before they arrive. Otherwise they foster a narrowly focused workforce that is always going to be prone to unemployment as qualifications evolve and software packages become obsolete.

Rooksmoor's Guide to Conducting Job Interviews

While the internet is littered with advice on how to perform at job interviews, there seems to be very little advice to those actually running the interviews. As regular readers of this blog will know, in my career I have experienced numerous examples of very poor interviewing. A key problem is that many employers think there is nothing to it and most I have encountered never give any training to their staff on how to conduct interviews. Even more common is that there seems to be no discussion between the Human Resources department and interviewers before the interview takes place, so often the interviewers are working under serious misapprehensions or with out-of-date information about how their company actually recruits. Especially in a recession as at the moment, companies forget that interviewees are also making a judgement. One employer was stunned recently when I refused to attend an interview because the whole set-up seemed amateur and based on 'The X Factor' auditions rather than business practice. They seemed highly offended, forgetting that I was making a judgement too and had no desire to work for a company that behaves in such an amateur way from my first contact with them. Companies, of course, will whine, 'well this is how we've always done it' or 'this is the current trend' or 'it's the only way it can be done' or even more deluded, 'it's the best way to do it'. What they forget is that a poor process leads to poor output and the people they recruit will not be the best for the job and may be very dissatisfied, while better and more suited recruits go to their rivals.

It has been suggested that I set up a consultancy or training for companies in how to conduct interviews. Such services are out there but too few companies make use of them. Here I am going to give my advice for free. I emphasise it is a personal opinion grounded in my experiences over the past 20 years rather than on research. However, I do hope that someone pays attention for the sake of their company and their potential staff.


Have Realistic Expectations
This partly goes back to the original job advertisement. Far too companies now advertise posts that even just a few years ago would have crossed 2-4 jobs. I asked an interviewer recently to outline the kind of career path he would have envisaged anyone taking to get the very wide ranging skill set he was demanding. Of course, he could not do that. Too often companies forget that employees live in the real world not in some fantasy ideal. Even people who have clear career objectives are not able to get the posts or training to entirely match them. Certainly it is difficult to change career every 3-5 years simply to get a completely new skill set and even if you do then you would later be told your other skills were out-of-date or that as an employee you are too inconsistent. Yet many posts would have to have had you follow such a tortuous path to pick up that range of skills. Remember candidates come from the real world and anyone who tells you they have been down 3-4 career paths is lying or is approaching retirement.

Do not have 'make weight' candidates. I know some companies expect short lists of a certain length, but you have to stand up and say, 'we have invited all the suitable candidates'. In some cases that will be one person. It your short list is too long, then run a second round of interviews and tasks, but never, never bother with inviting people that you have no intention of ever giving the job to. It wastes your time and money, especially when your company pays expenses; it wastes the candidate's time and breed discontent among them. They will go off and bad mouth your company. I had attended three interviews at a particular company over the years. The last one was followed by them telling me that I had stood no chance of getting the job despite interviewing well; I had just been invited to make up the numbers. I told them that they were fools to have done this and utter idiots to have told me they had done so. I have never applied to that company again and tell anyone who considers it to stay clear of them. I know I am not a big voice in the industry, but perhaps they have lost good candidates because they treated me as disposable. I trust we are past the days when organisations, particularly schools, would advertise posts that did not actually exist in order to 'see what is out there' like some kind of research project about the current availability of candidates and their calibre. If you want to know that, do some proper research, do not play with people. It wastes time and effort on your part and breeds bad blood among people who may be who you really want in the future.

Have realistic expectations in the interview itself. Interviews seem to be getting shorter and shorter. Despite the increasingly complex job descriptions (20-30 requirements, often even more are not unusual) the time for the interview is getting shorter. There is really no point having a 20-minute interview and even 30 minutes is tight. These days companies shave 10-15 minutes off the interview for a presentation, though in many cases have no real idea what they want from the presentation. You need a decent 45 minutes for an interview, with the presentation, if you feel you must have one, on top. You can probably see five candidates in a day. Given that a decent 'short' list is 4-6 candidates, that is fine. Start early and you can do it.

If you have 30 requirements for the job you need to allow time for the interviewee to talk to you at least a decent amount of them. Otherwise, what was the point of including those in the specifications? Of course, most companies can reduce the requirements for a job by about 35-50%, sometimes more, so going from 20 requirements down to, say, 10-12. That is still a lot to talk about, but is actually more realistic. In almost every job I apply for there is repetition and overlap between the different requirements. Despite employers emphasising the need for prioritisation in your work, they seem utterly incapable of doing that themselves. Thus, on the specification you too often get a list of every minute task you might do on the job and it is then turned into a requirement in which the candudate must have experience. It is incredibly unlikely that unless I am actually already in the job you are offering me that I can match all of that. What you need is someone who can turn their hand to those tasks even if they have not done those precise things before.

Do not expect an answer to the impossible. Recently I was asked how I would address a particular lack in training among a particular set of workers. There are three standard approaches to this and I suggested all three in turn and advised a hybrid model. However, the interviewer rejected each method in turn saying her workers did not have the time to access any of the methods. Yet, she continued to demand that I provide a solution. I kept persisting with different balances of the methods and all the innovations I could think of, but she remained dissatisfied. She wanted skills to be got into the workers with no time and no facilities to do it and seemed indignant that I could not provide the answer. I had to hold my hands up and say it was impossible. This was the time when I realised that even if I got the job working for that company would be a nightmare as they expect the impossible. Sometimes this develops because the candidate, though usually knowledgeable about your business because of their preparation, does not know about the behind closed doors peculiarities of your company, bear that in mind when you judge their answer. However, certainly do not present impossible situations unless you want to gauge whether the candidates to recognise they are impossible. We are not talking about unpleasant solutions like redundancy or cutbacks, we are talking about things that are impossible within the constraints you have laid down. Either alter the constraints or give up on your desired objective otherwise you and your staff will all end up dissatisfied. To distort a phrase, only very few can work miracles; the impossible remains impossible.


Knowing What You Are Looking For
This follows on from the elements raised above. It is made tough for interviewers by the fact they are expected to find an impossible person. The very detail of the specification often masks actually the kind of person that is truly being sought. The clearest case of this came up when I was actually on an interview panel. The post was as assistant to a leading manager and the candidates, all bar one female, varied between very submissive people who would have been great in a servant/personal assistant way across to people who could immediately stand in for the manager for whatever reason; a real lieutenant. It was only at the stage of looking at the different candidates after the interview that the question of what the manager actually wanted or needed from this spectrum came up. She said she wanted a lieutenant and that was what we gave her. In fact, she was lying to herself. What she wanted was a servant someone who would have no initiative but do everything she asked without question. Instead she got a very experienced woman with lots of initiative and her own ideas and of course friction quickly developed and within a year this woman was gone. Actually thinking through the kind of person you need and actually looking for them in the interview is vital for getting the correct person for the job. Of course, many interviewers are hamstrung by the specifications, which are often poorly thought out themselves. However, have an idea of what the job actually entails and what type of person is needed before you start the interviews.


If It Is Important, Get To It As Soon As You Can
This comes back to the shortness of interviews these days and the range of requirements. To me it seems that too many interview panels seem to start asking unimportant questions first and because they only have 20 minutes run out of time to get to the important ones. As noted above, prioritisation on interview panels is often poor. The fact that the interviewers spend so long on the mundane stuff, they are left in a position in which they cannot truly judge the candidate which makes all the effort on detailed specifications a waste of time. Again, not really knowing what kind of person they want does not help with prioritising the questions to be asked.

I was angered recently when I was told after an interview that as interviewee, I should have moved it on to the important topics far faster. I thought I had done. However, it is not the role of the interviewee to dictate what is asked, that is up to the interviewers. If, as an interviewer, you ask a question, the candidate will naturally assume it is important and seek to answer it as best they can. Do not expect them to be able to second guess your agenda. Interviewers drive the interview and should not abdicate control to the candidates and certainly not expect them to be psychic and know which paths you want to go down. If you want certain information and it is important to you ask for it and ask for it immediately. Interviewers, have confidence in what you want to find out and go out and find it; drive the interview not leave it languishing between you and the candidate as very, very few candidates will take control. If they do, they will have seen how inadequate you are and will have a lower opinion of your company.


Avoid Gimmicks And Hobbyhorses
There are fashions in interviews, in application forms and in CVs. Too often people lacking confidence in their interviewing or being confident but incompetent, adhere to fashions. In the early 2000s they would reject a candidate simply because they chose not to use Powerpoint. Now, there is a backlash and they want them to use other means. At the end of the day, in fact, it does not matter what media the candidate uses (they can always be easily trained in it), it is about how they present their ideas and, above all, though many interviewers forget this, what they are actually saying. To reject people because they adopt a particular approach, is actually discriminatory, though most interviewers do not realise this. Different countries and cultures have different approaches. In China oral presentations with reference to printed text is a norm. In New Zealand family or clan members will attend an interview and make a statement on behalf of the candidate. People coming for jobs in the UK will have to fit with the UK model, but then do no shove a whole other layer of expectations on top, that you actually cannot articulate yourself very well and have little idea why they are or are not important to the job you are interviewing for. Too many interviewers turn emphemeral fashion into some serious requirement, whereas, in fact, a year down the line people will be doing something different and you will have recruited someone who is good in the moment but no good for the duration. Look beyond current fashions to real skills and communication.

The same thing applies to hobbyhorses. All of us have an aspect of our work that we find particularly interesting, but we need to rein this in otherwise it can really distort an interview. I was on a panel with a woman who always questioned candidates about what time management software they used and put great store by their answers even if was not part of the job specifications. Of course, it gave no indication as to how skilled the candidate actually was at time management and she forgot that in a short time the software would be obsolete. Even worse was an interviewer who I faced six times. It became apparent that she decided on the suitability of the candidate before the interview. She separated the world into those who were 'born' (her word) to the role and the rest. She had no faith in training of any kind. If she felt you were among the elect you would get the job otherwise you stood no chance as I eventually realised. This was in the early 2000s and even then she should have been questioned about her approach because it goes against having job specifications as she often ruled out people who matched them very well. However, as we all know, once people reach certain seniority they are untouchable. Her approach meant recruiting a dozen people, a number of whom were probably not best suited to the job they were given, but to her intuition appeared to be 'born' to it.

It is human nature to fall back on assumptions and prejudices, but you can really do your company a disfavour if you let them rule your decision making as an interviewer. Go back to the specification and focus on what it is asking for and try to judge candidates on that basis not how you take to them or because they comply with something that just you think is important: no one factor makes a candidate suitable or unsuitable.


Prepare
Obviously I have touched on a lot of what needs to be done mentally before an interview, especially in determining the kind of person you are really looking for, unprejudiced by your own personal quirks. However, one thing that a lot of interview panels fall down on, is in the practical arrangement of the interview. I could do a whole posting just on this, but will try to stick to a couple of examples.

In the first case, the toilets near the interview rooms was being decorated and I had to be taken down a number of floors to find one and even the interviewer found it difficult getting passed all the workers. I poured a glass of water to find all the cups were cracked. The noise of the workers constantly disrupted the interview. Clearly this was major work and the interview should have been held elsewhere or on a different day. No-one had checked and they had not even checked the water glasses. It suggested the company was rather slapdash.

Recently an interview I attended was delayed by an hour because none of the interview panel knew how to operate the laptop or data projector that they were expecting candidates to use. This was appalling. Either they should have practised beforehand or had technical support on standby to help out. Issues do arise, but they should never delay an interview by an hour. Given that the job had a computer element to it, I did wonder about the competence in that field of the staff I would be working under if they were unable to activate what is basic equipment.

Possibly the worst interview I attended had a screen for presentations at the far end of a 8 metre long table. The interviewers were arranged in an arc so that they could face the screen. Not being a fan of Powerpoint I had opted not to use it (which was actually what lost me the job they told me later), but was expected to be interviewed with one interviewer sitting behind my left shoulder, one beside me and only one slightly in front of me to the left. I accept there is a transition between the presentation stage and the interview and am happy to move to a different seat, but clear the interview had been set up with no thought for what would happen after the presentation was over, despite the fact that the interview stage lasted 30 minutes to 10 minutes of presentation. I had to twist my neck to see two of the interviewers; that is discriminatory as with some disabilities I would have been unable to do that. The lead interviewer was far more nervous than me and described herself as being her colleague. Clearly she needed more practise. Given that this was at the company that later treated me as a 'make weight' candidate maybe it should have been no surprise that the whole thing appeared so amateur.

As an interviewer, you expect your candidates to arrive thoroughly prepared, that goes for you too. Often the interview is the first time that people get to really meet your company. Do not make yourselves look like a bunch of amateurs who do not know what they want or even how to use basic equipment. No-one is compelled to take a job with you; the best candidates can always go somewhere else, even in a recession, so make a good impression. A good impression comes from good preparation. Do not simply walk into an interview, rather, beforehand, meet with the other members of the panel, check the room and equipment yourself and know where everything is and how it all works. Poor quality interviewers only recruit poor quality employees.


Know About Recruitment At Your Company
This is an extension of my advice about preparing, but is something I have noticed so often it is worthwhile having a separate section. Often interview panels have a member of the Human Resources department included, which is good, but too often even these people seem ill-informed about very common questions interviewees are going to ask. Many interviewees are going to ask about pay, leave, conditions, relocation expenses, child care, etc., so before you are part of an interview panel make sure you know the up-to-date information on this. It is no good to say refer to a website, because on that information the candidate may be judging whether they want the job or not. As they may be offered the job while on the journey home, they need to know now not later in order to make that judgement. For my last job I was offered £4000 in relocation expenses at the interview, but because of caveats which were apparently on the website (though I was unable to find them despite a thorough search) this was reduced to £500 and left me in a financial position that I had not got out of even months after having worked for the company.

The other thing that has struck me is that many interviewers have in their mind a whole string of assumptions about how their company recruits people that are either out-of-date or simply wrong. There was a phases in the early 2000s when more online applications were available, and many companies assumed that because they had a pdf you could print out, that that equated to an 'online' application, whereas in fact it translated to an application form that you had to fill in by hand as you would have done back in the 1990s. Yet, interviewer after interviewer seemed surprised by hand completed forms assuming their application process was now 'online' without asking what that actually meant.

The worst case happened recently when an interviewer expressed surprise at the application form I had used to apply for a job. It had been the one applicants were directed to and clearly was the correct one as I never would have been shortlisted otherwise. However, she felt it was lacking certain information and it was clear she had not spoken to Human Resources at all about what sort of forms they were using and whether the elicit the information the interviewer was felt necessary.

This continued. In feedback, the interviewer revealed that not finding a declaration from me saying I did not have a criminal record spent much of the interview trying to find this out so missed out on the really important questions. Aside from the obvious questions about obsessing over this in the interview (the job is in fact open to people with criminal records) when she could have got the information later and not asking about it directly, she had failed to realise, or bothered to find out, that all such declarations go direct to Human Resources, not the interviewers. Hence, she was questioning indirectly about something that her company had received and had gone to the correct people for the procedures in place.  Thus, she effectively rendered the interview a waste of time, all because she had not bothered to find out how her company actually recruits people.


Assist The Candidates
I arrived at the company to be told that I could not park on the site and should drive into the city 5Km away and catch a bus back to the site. I had never been to the city before and though I had navigated my way to the site, I had no idea about the bus services or the car parks and given that the interview was forty minutes away probably would not have made it back in time. I managed to persuade a security guard to let me park. I had not been warned about any of this beforehand. Partly this kind of careless attitude stems for a kind of machismo: that if the candidates cannot parachute on to the site and abseil down to the interview room, or the equivalent, then they are no good. However, the message it gives in fact is, that you cannot even be bothered to think through what a candidate needs to go through to reach your interview. Organise parking for candidates, or if that is not possible, tell them where they can find it, where they can get food, taxis and so on. They are often strangers to your location so help them out, it is not difficult. You can even produce a standardised information sheet you send to all candidates or put it up on your website.

In most businesses now, people travel hundreds of kilometres for an interview. They often need to have accommodation when they arrive and need to know where they can get dinner on a Sunday night or how far the site is from the railway station. Companies insist you book 7 days ahead for rail tickets if they are going to pay expenses and yet they inform you of the interview only 2-5 days beforehand. This is again discriminatory, as anyone with religious or care commitments might find it impossible to re-arrange their lives to fit your sudden decision to see them at such short notice. It is not being tough to demand all this from candidates, it is simply callous.

Of course, we can all find out about towns using the internet, but it is far better if we are given a list of places to stay, even if you can book them for us, using local contacts. One company did this for me and paid the bill so easing the processing as I did not have to reclaim expenses. If you want to attract good candidates you need to ease their journey to and from your interview. This is also helped by having a clear schedule and not like the 'X Factor' company, not giving any indication of when the candidate will be interviewed. To do that is again discriminatory. People with certain health conditions need to know when they can take medication or when they should/can eat and certain religions need prayer at certain times of the day. Too many companies plough ahead with an attitude of 'put up and shut up' again failing to realise how poorly it reflects on them.

Some companies seem incredulous when I ask who is on the interview panel. Some people let you know as a matter of course, others see it as an intrusion into confidential information. However, the UK is not a big country and when you start talking about specific roles in particular industries, then you quickly narrow down the range of people working in that area. It cuts both ways, I do not want to be interviewed by someone I made a harassment complaint against and you do not want me being interviewed by a friend of mine on the panel. Again, schools provided some of the worst examples of this tricksy behaviour, with headteachers dissembling throughout the day as an ordinary teacher taking the candidate around only later to reveal who they really were and using any candid information they had picked up during the day against the candidate. Again, I hope such behaviour is dead. For me, knowing the backgrounds of the people interviewing me, what knowledge they have, and their outlook on things is important. Companies often have details of their leading employees on websites but then, ironically, are suddenly offended if you ask who will be on your actual interview panel.

Pay expenses. Out of your company budget, some travelling and accommodation expenses are minimal, but to candidates, especially those who are currently unemployed, they can be very important. Again, they signal how much you do or do not care about the candidate. It is no point saying that you give wonderful salaries and benefits packages if you cannot pay out a hundred pounds for a person coming to interview. Either you want them to attend and you pay for them to attend or you do not want them. Do not give out the signal you only half want them by not paying expenses or they can easily turn to a company that makes it clear they are truly in with a chance of a job.

Give feedback. The ironic thing about the bad practices I have mentioned here is that everyone who carries them out has been a candidate at some time themselves, yet, still behave in a way they would have loathed to have experienced themselves. Again, it is part of machismo of business that was introduced in the 1980s that generally you do not tell people if they have been shortlisted or not, they simply say, if you have not heard in two or four or even six weeks, assume you have not been selected. Think how you would feel left in limbo for six weeks about a post, your life is on hold. The same applies when waiting to hear if you have got the job after the interview.  Usually after 24 hours you can guess you have not got the job, though this is not always the case, I have been offered a job over a week after the interview took place.  I accept I might have not been the first choice, but to be left assuming I had failed was not fair.  Companies complain it is too expensive to write to anyone, but in these days of emails being effectively free to companies, it can be done simply and in bulk. Even getting a generic email saying you have not been short listed is better than never getting anything.

When it comes to the people you actually interview, there is no excuse for not providing a formal letter outlining that they failed to get the job. You only have to do this for 4-5 people or less. If the candidate was good enough that you invited them for interview they are worthy of getting a proper response. Many companies do not give feedback on interviews, but that suggests that their interview procedures were unsound and that they are embarrassed to reveal that they simply gave the job to someone they knew or almost picked them at random (which actually often happens given the failings in the actual interviews detailed above). Eliminate that feeling that you made your decision arbitrarily, give feedback, refer to the specifications.

Give the candidates some faith that they are not simply entering a lottery if they apply for a job with you, but that they have been part of a professional process. Of course, that does mean you have to have had a professional process in place, but if you have followed my guidance above, you should have done. I have been interviewed by one company for six posts, another for three posts and my last employer for four posts, so there is a good chance that a candidate will come back to you for other vacancies. They need to know if they are wasting their time in applying again and they want to know how to improve their chances in the future. Again, this helps you get better candidates (especially if this one just missed out or would be ideal for another role) and also discourage truly unsuitable people from applying again, so saving you time processing their future applications.



Overall, when setting up and conducting interviews bear in mind two principles. 1) How do I want my company appear to someone visiting it? 2) What is it like to be interviewed and how can I make that a good experience for the candidate? In this way you will not show to candidates a company which is disorganised, unskilled or callous, but one that knows what it is about and what it wants and treats its (potential) employees with consideration. Do that and you will not only save embarrassment for yourself, your colleagues and your company but it will also enable you to secure the best candidate.

P.P. 19/04/2011
Since originally writing this posting, I have had numerous other interviews and consequently have come across another thing that about a third of the companies which have interviewed me since 2009 have made.  This is to assign the calling of people to interview (usually by email) to someone who is about to go on leave.  In these cases, I email back to the invitation to interview only to have an 'Out of Office' automated response telling me that the person is now on leave for one or two weeks; in the worst cases not returning until the interview has taken place.

Do Not Have People Acting As Points Of Contact Just Before They Go On Leave
I imagine that companies see calling people to interview as a minor activity that can be left to someone in the time they have before they go on holiday.  However, for the interviewee it means the one point of contact you have been given with the company is immediately broken.  Often the 'Out of Office' advises you to contact a colleague of the person on leave.  I have tried that on many occasions only to find these alternatives have no idea that there is even an interview being carried out.  Why is this important?  Well, there is a lot to find out before you come to an interview.  I know companies think that they provide all the necessary information for the interview straight off or that it can be found on their websites.  This is, in fact, rarely the case.

Many companies believe there is information on their websites, which is actually not there.  They also seem to assume that outsiders can access internal documentation, but often you run up against a section requiring a password.  In addition, there is a difference between showing a map with car parks on it and being able to know if by, say, 1pm when the interviewee needs to arrive all of these car parks will be full.  As companies set more bizarre tasks for the interviewees, they often fully understand what the task entails, but it is not always as clear to the candidates.  I accept that some companies see this as a task in itself, but it is good to have clarity on the principles I have outlined above.  One example recently was that I was told I would be discussing a case study.  However, it was not clear whether I should provide the case study myself or whether it would be one given at the interview.

Another issue is that at times you will need to try and adjust the date or time of the interview.  Companies seem to work at the two extremes.  Some will have no alteration of the time or day they send you (unless a problem develops at their end when they will be happy to keep you waiting for hours beyond the scheduled time) or they interview people on different days to fit in.  On three occasions in recent months I have been called to two interviews on the same day.  This happens because interviews predominantly happen on a Tuesday with the next popular day being Friday.  This means that the days for interviews is very limited.  I am quite lucky in that I get called to interview for every three applications I make and this should show that a number of companies value my skills and experience, especially as I have usually beaten off 65-95 other people even to get to the interview.  Thus, I have had to rush hundreds of kilometres between interviews.  Unfortunately now in 2011, the willingness to modify an interview time for even 30 minutes seems to have gone and a 'take it or leave it' mentality has been adopted.  I guess this is because there are so many potential candidates now available.  However, ironically, it means that companies might not be seeing the best candidates, the ones a number of companies are interested in.

A consequence of all of this is that you need to be able to talk to/email someone almost immediately once you have been invited to interview.  I accept that some companies have no interest in helping the interviewees; they think they are doing them a big favour just by calling them.  However, a good company will make sure that the point of contact with interviewees will not disappear off on holiday the moment they have sent out the invitations and be ready to either respond to queries or at least pass them on to the relevant person.