This post is inspired by a retweet which took me to this link.
Jobcentre Plus uses workfare!!! « Ipswich Unemployed Action..
It is a posting on the website about various "work experience" places available in JobCentres, one of which remarkably asks for a CV and application form. Remarkable, indeed, for an organisation that, over the years, developed an obsession with "Fair and Open" competition, where the CV was seemingly irrelevant.
"Fair and Open" competition was the selection method used by the Department for Work and Pensions for the past few years. Qualifications were disregarded (applicants were not required to list qualifications, to be precise), and everything hinged on scoring enough marks in the DWP’s literacy and numeracy tests – the numeracy test being multiple choice. Participation in these tests, for which travel expenses were never normally paid, sometimes depended on answering a series of questions on the application form by writing the numbers 1 to 5 in the correct order to each question.
Was the method ever “fair and open”?
I started work at Primrose Mill in Clitheroe, then a filestore for the Child Support Agency, in October 2003.It was on a casual basis at the time, though Fixed Term contracts were in the pipeline to cover the projected closure of the filestore in the summer of 2006.
It was routine work, sorting post and files and reading the same details on a database over and over again, but at least it was within walking distance of my home and the Health Centre (one trip per week to collect a prescription). Primrose Mill was split over four floors, with Admin Officers/Assistants based on the first and Support Grade Band 2 (SGB2) staff working on the boxes of files on all four floors.
The Fixed Term contracts on offer in the summer of 2004 were for AAs and SGB2s via "Fair and Open" competition.. Literacy and numeracy tests were scheduled to take place in the local JobCentre. I completed the application form which featured the series of question that required me to write the numbers 1-5 in a particular order for each question. The application form was sent to Falkirk in Scotland.
I had been doing the job for around seven months when the recruitment process started. I was given a rejection letter back from Falkirk. I was excluded from the selection test while other casual staff were allowed to participate. Never mind how I performed over seven months in the job, someone in Falkirk had concluded that I was not suitable without ever seeing me do the job. No explanation was forthcoming.
Marian Rhodes, manager of the two filestores in Clitheroe and Blackburn, (a North-South divide prevailed in the content of the two filestores) expressed her dissatisfaction at the way the vacancies had been advertised. A second recruitment exercise was started, in which I filled in a different application form to the one that I had completed before, featuring none of the questions which required an answer of 1,2,3,4,5 in a particular order.
For these Fixed Term contracts, the DWP (Child Support Agency) were judging one set of applicants using a selection criterion which didn’t apply to others applying for the same job at a later date. Their idea of “Fair and Open” recruitment….
I did the selection test second time around, achieving 100% in the numeracy test. I got a Fixed Term contract in the end, which started nearly four months after the casual job ended; time enough to have shingles, so I wasn’t complaining.
On returning to the filestore, I was given a refresher in reading the CSA’s CSCS database, the repetitive task that I referred to earlier. I had done the task so often before that I needed only half an hour on the computer before the supervising Admin Officer gave the OK for me to do the job myself.
How long would the Admin Officer have needed to train a new member of staff?
Pity those fools in the DWP who rejected applicants with relevant experience for jobs because a computer says so. Wonder if they supervise the poor souls on workfare – sorry, work experience, now?
I had a perfect attendance record between January 2005 (start of the Fixed Term contract) and November at Primrose Mill, and stayed on until its closure in August 2006, assisting in the final transfer of the files that were administered by people based in Falkirk in the final months.
I have not worked since.
