Gear4music recruitment is a joke

[skankdelvar]

2 hours ago, Skinnyman said:

And Rickenbacker.

Good grief. 

 

2 hours ago, Skinnyman said:

Imagine if John Hall called in on one of the Royal Progresses

Given the historic nature of relations it would naturally be incumbent on Ped to spring upon Mr Hall in a pantherish fashion and pummel the moustachioed munter to a fine purée. Such a course of action might open Our Glorious Helmsman up to the unthinkable outcome of dismissal, criminal charges and public obloquy.

On the whole, I think it would be best if @ped chose a different retail sector. One where any BassChat-related baggage wouldn't matter.

[SpondonBassed]

10 minutes ago, skankdelvar said:

On the whole, I think it would be best if @ped chose a different retail sector. One where any BassChat-related baggage wouldn't matter.

Um... isn't that what Guitarchat is for?

[SpondonBassed]

21 hours ago, ped said:

I’ll write a full history of the site at some point for the history books! It’s quite a story actually for a few reasons, up to and including an FBI takedown!

Please do.  May I suggest that @skankdelvar writes the final draft from your manuscript and notes.  It'll be a best seller!

[skankdelvar]

3 minutes ago, SpondonBassed said:

Um... isn't that what Guitarchat is for?

I was thinking more of millinery. Or haberdashery. 

No one's going to go into a haberdasher's and say 'Good day to you, young man. I wish to purchase two hundred one-inch pins, a gross of doily edges and ... are you that Ped out of BassChat? Why, I oughta...'

[SpondonBassed]

23 hours ago, pete.young said:

I'm not an HR bod, but you are wrong. There is no law forcing a company to advertise internally or externally. There is a law that prevents employers discriminating against internal or external candidates.

This is something that has gone on for many years.  There might not be a written law but there are several unwritten ones to do with recruitment and employment agencies, finder's fees etc.  In many cases these become formal agreements and they can be considered as contractual obligations.

In the late eighties we had the situation, already described above, where we (the dozen or so sub-contractors) were invited to join the permanent staff, of a major international aerospace company for which we already worked, to do the same job that they paid us for by the hour via an employment agency.  We were told initially that employment was assured as most of us had proved our worth over a period of time.

A couple of days later however we were told that the jobs would now have to be advertised in the national papers to avoid ill feeling among the employment agencies.  Since these agencies are a major resource for companies of this stature, it was agreed that we all had to apply as if we weren't already employed to avoid the company being accused of poaching by the agencies.  It was a formality however and the company interviews were very brief.  The vacancies were mostly filled with experienced sub-contractors such as myself.

I stayed as a sub-contractor for the money.  I wasn't bothered by job security so much at that time.  Even with a mortgage, I was assured work anywhere in the world with my qualifications.  Now of course, there aren't any jobs for life whether you are paid by the company you work for or by their agent.  You are probably as secure working as a sub-contractor as you would be working as an employee in many cases

What with Internet recruitment policies and such, I bet it's even more of a minefield.

I'm happy to call myself semi-retired.

@ped;  I'm sorry you suffered a sort of non-rejection Dear John letter.  It's hard to know how to file that one.

Edited October 13, 2019 by SpondonBassed

[Stub Mandrel]

31 minutes ago, SpondonBassed said:

Since these agencies are a major resource for companies of this stature, it was agreed that we all had to apply as if we weren't already employed to avoid the company being accused of poaching by the agencies. 

Or to avoid the company having to pay the agreed fees for doing so set out in the contract between the company and the agency...

[SpondonBassed]

29 minutes ago, Stub Mandrel said:

Or to avoid the company having to pay the agreed fees for doing so set out in the contract between the company and the agency...

 

1 hour ago, SpondonBassed said:

There might not be a written law but there are several unwritten ones to do with recruitment and employment agencies, finder's fees etc.

 

[lozkerr]

On 12/10/2019 at 17:23, Machines said:

I know for a fact some NHS bodies advertise and interview external candidates when they've already decided which internal one will get it. And the post was created for that person too. 

Can confirm. No names, no pack drill, but I've worked for the NHS and seen it happen first-hand.

[skej21]

I have numerous friends from my days in York who work there. They all know each other from outside of work. The majority of the positions are filled by people's mates. The low wages, lack of career progression and low job satisfaction is why the service is mostly dreadful, as they are not interested in experience they just want to work with mates they can have a laugh with throughout the day.

[bassaussie]

On 12/10/2019 at 09:14, ped said:

..... unfortunately did not get a chance to fully consider your application.  ....
 

This wording is dreadful. There's absolutely nothing positive to be taken from it, whereas there's multiple ways to take it negatively.

You said you feel you may've dodged a bullet. I think you might be right. If they can get something as simple as a rejection letter wrong, imagine what else they can get wrong.

[Monkey Steve]

OK, I'll put my hand up as a sort of HR bod - not exactly, but the work I do has brought me into pretty close contact and I know far more than I really want to about HR procedures and legislation.  I can also give the point of view from somebody who has to select people to interview, and choose who gets the job

First, there is no law about having to externally advertise jobs. The law has very little to say on these matters outside of discrimination issues, and thinks that it should be up to the employing company to decide who to give jobs to.

However, it may be company policy to advertise externally.  And generally it's considered good practice to do so, if for no other reason to make sure that the company is seeing a much wider pool of candidates, is bringing in fresh people and new ideas, and at least making sure that their internal people are as good as what they can find elsewhere.  My own company has a slightly weird variation on this, which is that all vacancies must be advertised internally - we employ close to 15,000 people in the UK, right across the country, and want to promote mobility and career progression.  We then only have to advertise externally if we cannot find a suitable internal applicant.

As regards employment agencies, without wanting to doubt @SpondonBassed I doubt very much that any company would sign a contract with an agency that required all vacancies to be advertised externally.  They may, however, have agreed a commission rate so that all external vacancies have to go through that specific agency - this isn't uncommon.  In the situation described, with the people who got the jobs already being provided by the agency - you were not being employed by the company directly, and were in fact all external candidates.  The company would have had to pay the agency a fee for converting your temporary/contract employment to be permanent, so the agency has won regardless.  The company may have wanted to look at a wider pool of applicants, and the agency may have suggested that they do this, but there was no incentive for the agency to do this rather than simply turning all of the agency workers into permanent employees

From the perspective of someone recruiting for a job, yes, you might well advertise when you have an internal candidate.  I can only speak for myself, and I've always done this with a straight bat - to satisfy ourselves that there isn't a better external candidate rather than just giving it to an internal candidate because they have applied - you want to get the best person for the job.  And when I've done it, in one case the external candidates were so much better than the internal one that the internal one was rejected at an early stage.  But in another, it was very close, and the internal candidate got the job because they could demonstrate that they would be a good choice for the job, even though the external candidate was, if anything, slightly better at the interview and would have got the job if the other applicant wasn't internal.  It's definitely a consideration, because you still have to manage the internal applicants after you turn them down, and sometimes you risk losing a good employee because they are ready for career progression and if they don't get this vacancy then they will leave.

Of course, sometimes, it's a good way to get them to leave...

Can't say for certain that other companies don't just invite people in to satisfy their company requirements that they have seen external applicants before awarding the job to an internal applicant.  But, again, it is in the employer's interests to select the best person for the job, so if they're not doing so then they are the ones who will ultimately suffer.

As for picking who to interview, I'm sure that I have rejected people who would have been perfectly good at doing the job.  There's a lot of second guessing that goes on - what are these gaps in their employment history, ooh, they've been travelling and never stay for very long in any of their previous jobs so why would we trust them to stay put with us, that sort of thing.  It may be simply that you read something that isn't true into how the CV presents their experience, or they don't present their experience as well as somebody else does.  Rule of thumb, you probably want to see three, maybe four people to interview for most jobs, so you have to pick which three or four CVs best suit the vacancy.  And I've been on the other end - applying for jobs that seem made for my experience, and not getting asked to an interview.

And despite discrimination on the grounds of age being illegal, there are some jobs that you know would be best suited to youngsters in their first or second job than they would be for someone with more experience.  My guess is that this is what @ped suffered from - they are looking for a school leaver who is happy doing grunt work, and that's not how you appear in your CV.

While it hasn't helped, at least you got a reply - I'm hearing about a lot of jobs that have to be applied for through a portal which says "thanks, we're expecting a lot of applications, so if you don't hear back from us within a couple of weeks assume that we're not going to ask you in for an interview this time".  I wouldn't read too much into the wording of the response.

 

Edited October 15, 2019 by Monkey Steve

[Monkey Steve]

One other thing to highlight in rejecting CVs out of hand, again from the perspective of whittling down a large number of applicants for a small number of vacancies, they might simply be applying some very broad requirements - in this case, perhaps experience of working in a music shop, or sales environment.  They may well not be looking beyond "have they done something similar in the past?" 

It's always a more difficult sell to convince an employer that you can do the job when you have no directly relevant experience and other candidates might look more likely to be able to hit the ground running

Edited October 15, 2019 by Monkey Steve

[DanOwens]

I interviewed for a post within my organisation - in fact there were two posts and I was very friendly with one of the panel (he'd took me to lunch and told me to apply). It was a given, but I didn't rest on my laurels, I prepared for the interview and gave one clunky answer but the rest was gold. 

Three young women were recruited. They created an extra post so they could hire all three. Each of them is in their early 20s and they're all stunning. My mate who took me to lunch has a reputation already, but he ignored all the experienced people on the panel and literally hired the three young women. 

I still can't get over how blatant it seemed; there were far more experienced and suitable candidates; one of the recruited people had just finished university and is now on a salary £4k higher than mine! 

I'm not jealous of those that were recruited, I'm just horrified at the blatant sexism and objectivism of the panel (all men).

[SpondonBassed]

4 hours ago, Monkey Steve said:

I doubt very much that any company would sign a contract with an agency that required all vacancies to be advertised externally.

That's not what I said.

[Monkey Steve]

11 minutes ago, SpondonBassed said:

That's not what I said.

Can you clarify, because that's how I read your post (not a criticism and I'm not looking for an argument, just how I saw it). 

My reading was that you were saying that while there isn't a legal requirement, there can be a contractual agreement with an employment agency to advertise all vacancies externally,

[SpondonBassed]

21 minutes ago, Monkey Steve said:

Can you clarify, because that's how I read your post (not a criticism and I'm not looking for an argument, just how I saw it). 

My reading was that you were saying that while there isn't a legal requirement, there can be a contractual agreement with an employment agency to advertise all vacancies externally,

It's just that the agencies don't want the companies they supply subbies to to poach "their" people.

[Silvia Bluejay]

17 hours ago, DanOwens said:

I'm not jealous of those that were recruited, I'm just horrified at the blatant sexism and objectivism of the panel (all men).

IMO it's more of a case of reverse sexism. I could argue that those young ladies did have an unfair advantage over the better-qualified-but-wrong-gender-or-wrong-age candidates, assuming that the ladies didn't fall into the trap of sleeping with the boss, and instead simply worked their way up the ladder normally.

I have witnessed the opposite as well, young men being favoured over older, more experienced women by a female boss, without the need to sleep with her; just 'because'.

Edited October 16, 2019 by Silvia Bluejay

[Monkey Steve]

15 hours ago, SpondonBassed said:

It's just that the agencies don't want the companies they supply subbies to to poach "their" people.

I think we're talking at cross purposes

If a company is employing people through an agency, the contract with the agency will require the company to pay a recruitment fee if they want to make them permanent.  That's standard, because you weren't working for the company, you were working for the agency

[SpondonBassed]

8 hours ago, Monkey Steve said:

I think we're talking at cross purposes

If a company is employing people through an agency, the contract with the agency will require the company to pay a recruitment fee if they want to make them permanent.  That's standard, because you weren't working for the company, you were working for the agency

Refer to the part of my post that I have already had to repeat above:  Finder's Fees.  Also bear in mind that I was doing this thirty years ago, before contractors had rights to holidays and such.

That is all.

There are many other posts on this topic.  I think I've been here long enough.

Edited October 16, 2019 by SpondonBassed

[skankdelvar]

On 15/10/2019 at 15:56, DanOwens said:

They created an extra post so they could hire all three. Each of them is in their early 20s and they're all stunning.

The management clearly made a huge mistake in appointing three attractive women. 

As everyone knows, I am militantly anti-sexist but we all know that pretty girls are usually lazy, high maintenance and don't stick around long. Secondly, three pretty girls in one office will inevitably fall out, usually in a 2 vs 1 psychodrama that drags everyone else into their vortex of madness.

The bosses would have been much better off appointing just one middle-aged woman of homely appearance. They work harder, they're sensible and loyal and they don't come up to your desk at half-four in the afternoon whining 'Can I leave early to go the gym? Pleeeze?'

[DanOwens]

15 hours ago, skankdelvar said:

The management clearly made a huge mistake in appointing three attractive women. 

As everyone knows, I am militantly anti-sexist but we all know that pretty girls are usually lazy, high maintenance and don't stick around long. Secondly, three pretty girls in one office will inevitably fall out, usually in a 2 vs 1 psychodrama that drags everyone else into their vortex of madness.

The bosses would have been much better off appointing just one middle-aged woman of homely appearance. They work harder, they're sensible and loyal and they don't come up to your desk at half-four in the afternoon whining 'Can I leave early to go the gym? Pleeeze?'

I got a SkankDelvar diatribe in response to one of my posts! I'll die happy!

[Monkey Steve]

16 hours ago, SpondonBassed said:

Refer to the part of my post that I have already had to repeat above:  Finder's Fees.  Also bear in mind that I was doing this thirty years ago, before contractors had rights to holidays and such.

That is all.

There are many other posts on this topic.  I think I've been here long enough.

sorry - I genuinely don't understand the point you're trying to make.  I've re-read your post and still don't understand why you think that there's any problem in the company paying the agency to convert your temporary employment through the agency into into permanent employment with the Company

Just saying "finders fees" doesn't help me.  The Company and the agency have done exactly what I would have expected them to have done.  Can you not explain what the issue is here?

[Stub Mandrel]

41 minutes ago, Monkey Steve said:

sorry - I genuinely don't understand the point you're trying to make.  I've re-read your post and still don't understand why you think that there's any problem in the company paying the agency to convert your temporary employment through the agency into into permanent employment with the Company

The whole thing started because he recounted an example of a company using a sham recruitment exercise to avoid paying those fees.

[Monkey Steve]

2 hours ago, Stub Mandrel said:

The whole thing started because he recounted an example of a company using a sham recruitment exercise to avoid paying those fees.

Thanks Stub - I got the argument turned round in my reading of it

But my point still stands - I simply disagree that the Company who was at that point paying the agencies for supplying the temporary staff could have recruited them as permanent without paying a fee to the agencies, just by running some ads.  They'd have gone out of business pretty quickly if they left that loophole open, and it's been standard practice for well over the 30 years that the incident took place

[skankdelvar]

7 hours ago, DanOwens said:

I got a SkankDelvar diatribe in response to one of my posts!

Yes. Yes, you did.

7 hours ago, DanOwens said:

I'll die happy!

Wait till you see my invoice.

It's in the post.