The failure of recruitment practices and a strategy to combat them - don't stop

I've been working a new job for 3 years. Some may think 3 years is hardly new. But this environment I'm working in is constantly changing. It is in a sense it is schizophrenic. Sometimes a manager may mention Lean as if this is a holly word, but not understand really what it is. Then it's all change and when a change happens we have just 5 minutes to get trained on it, on a specific day at a specific time. If you happen to be on leave, then you'll miss out. But 6 months down the line you'll then find out what you missed out on. It is chaotic.

Working there 3 you most people may think it's no longer a new job. which is not the way I see it. In my previous workplace for 32 years it is new. In fact, if I hadn't of known otherwise, this Organisation has done more to ensure I didn't get employed than get employed with them. My experience in this area is not the same but juxtaposes so much most of what I already know has some relevance to this new job role. yet in the recruitment process I had tried in excess of 20 times. If anything, this shows persistence leads to results. Even though they rejected me many times. My manager has also gotten to see my value, although at one point during the probation period it felt like he wanted to get rid off me because I kept saying I didn't know how to do certain things. Things which the crap computer system would barely allow someone who knew how to do it to do. 

So I took screenshots of the online recruitment questions and particularly my multiple choice answers. I
would see if that set of answers worked or not. There would be a computer generated reply, possibly AI generated, giving reason and clues as to why I did not fit their criteria. But eventually I did. The bastards, however, gave two sets of tests. One was of personality. It was I thought somewhat offensive to say I didn't have the personality, and also at the same time to say the answers to the personality questions needed to be honest and there was no right or wrong set of answers. However, It was clear from their you-have-failed email they did take into account personality. So I changed my personality answers. Taking several failed applications, I created a spreadsheet and found the answers which got through. Funnily enough, it was my 3rd application which got me a job. My other applications were for different jobs and none of them were successful. Even now I continue to apply for other jobs in the same organisation, I expect I'm now up to 10 other failed applications. It is in my view an incredibly flawed and unfair process.

As a manager and a decision maker, I've had to deal with many situations, most of which I've now forgotten about.  Yet, I have confidence in my abilities. Put me in the situation and see what happens. See how I react and how I deal with it. Instead, this Organisation likes to see how good my written supporting statement is. They look at things called competencies. Hell, I was studying competencies and recruitment practices 20 years ago. Funny and tragic thing is I have known of applicants who have never written their own applications. They have been done by people in their lives who had better literary skills. Yet, these individuals have got through and beaten the system. Got the job. I do my own work. I don't get anyone else to do it. You could call me donkey man. Mind, that might mean something else. Donkey, as in carrying all the weight and baggage on my back myself. Just like I pay my taxes and don't take out of the system. It almost makes me feel a bit bitter. I have seen many a manager who were incompetent, jumped to conclusions and decisions, acted inappropriately, even the occasional bully. The recruitment process failed in allowing these persons through. I've seen good, hard-working employees leave organisations because they just could not get on with the person who managed them. I've nearly done so myself. Yet the recruitment process doesn't account for these.

So I still continue. I'm not stopping at all. Even if I may be in the older age range where I'm expected to retire and shut up. I really want to get my job done and want to show I can do it and do it better than many other people. So I'll copy all of my statements I make, request feedback every time and then do what I can to improve my answers. So far I've got to learn it's what they haven't said in the recruitment process which is most important.  It's these unwritten rules which are more valuable than any introduction session on how to fill in a form and what they are looking for. Back to basics, I will get better and better and they'll not get rid of me. I will retry again even though my job is so demanding and I could not adequately do it if I worked 60 hours a week.

 

Right Wing Press, Tabloids, Racists, Propagandists

Then there is that dreadful organisation known as Antifa. They put their stickers up everywhere. Lampposts, abandoned buildings, unused shop windows. They are so outlandish I don't know where to look. Well in fact I tried looking. I did a google search. Asked my neighbours. Sent a thread into the treadosphere. Where can I join up, I asked? This sounds like an organisation I want to be part of. An organisation worthy of being a member. They fight against injustice and fascism. 

I was informed my grandad would have been a member. He fought in the second world war, on his belly he was had a rifle and shot at the nazis. He never mentioned whether he killed any. So it come to mind there is actually no organisation called Antifa. None at all. I could not sign up, could not pay any subs, could not get a monthly magazine. Because by fact of being open minded and thinking in the words of Jo Cox there is more we have in common which brings us together than difference. And of course, the understanding when it comes to taxes, migrants have paid more tax per person than taken out of the system than ordinary indigenous white people. They create businesses, they are compassionate and have charities and they support communities. Yet they are villainised. 

Our NHS would collapse and there would be no NHS at all without immigrants. Yet the right wing want them out of this country. So every white racist small minded little Englander will to shoot themselves in the foot and they don't care about their health, their wellbeing. Of course, the result is a Privatised healthcare system. That's what the Tories and Fartrage want. To which I would ask does this improve the situation? It does not. All those racist little Englanders will find they will have to pay two or three thousand pounds a year for the basic level of health insurance. So, they will inevitably get sick, but it will not just be the racist voters who get sick, it will be their children, their grandchildren their elderly relatives. Because they can't afford either medicine or healthcare. Britain effectively becomes a little America. People will die. Preventable deaths. Yet the racists don't get it. They will waive their little flags think they are patriotic, but all their actions have been those of very unpatriotic people. They will as well suffer from their illnesses and inevitably die of them. But so will the left voting populace. 

Over a long period of time a lot of change has happened to the press in Britain. It was once just right wing in general. Always bias, because of course there is no such thing as a neutral fact-finding press, always supporting the Tories and always spinning a web of bias if not lies. But it has now moved so far right most ordinary right-wing papers are now digging up the remains of Mussolini and making shrines of him. Here's a kneecap. Yes, the perfect thing to smash any liberal in the face with. Yes, we don't care about their views we just want to smash them, bash them, tread them into the dirt so they cry and can never get up again. Now really? Will that solve anything? Of course it won't. The future will be worse for Britian, the Overton window has moved. These voters who like Deform may think they are defending Britain and things will change for the better because a snake oil salesman says so. Some I believe don't understand the power of politics, they don't understand the repercussions of their votes and the characters of those they vote in. 

We are now in a fight, it is starting to buble up in the streets as flags bought from a factory in China are hung on lampposts. By so called patriots. Who in reality will bring Britain to it's knees. This is not the Britian I have been brought up in. I am Antifa. I'll use words, and if it comes to it actions to demostrate peacefully. 

One vote one adult

 It makes me wonder whether the notion of one person and one vote is representative of democracy. For as each year of my life passes, I think there are some individuals who should not get the right to vote. Especially those who fall down into the depths of a rabbit hole. Not too dissimilar to something Lewis Carol wrote about. The persons who have their own facts, which are not actually facts at all but are lies dressed up in easy to understand language. The easy to understand bit is because they don't use the wonderful faculty between their ears. It is like they go out of their way to make bad decisions. Some of those individuals are even those who are close to me and this causes great emotional and psychological pain. It is not possible to say otherwise. They have simply been brain washed. Social media has infected their mind with falsehoods. It is like some malign force is out there. Who can it be? The Russians, the Chinese the crazy right wing lunatic Americans. Perhaps all of them.

One vote one person. I follow British politics with enthusiasm. I hate what Britain has become after 14 years of Tory malpractice, 14 years of corruption, 14 years of racing to the bottom or the world. As a country we can no longer be considered part of the developed world. There is no housing and those who want social housing are on waiting lists up to 17 years or more. Housing is one of the most important items every single person must have, a home, a place of their own. After 14 years of Tories we have the highest utility bills we've ever had before. The disaster of privatised water now mean our seas and waterways (except Wales, Ireland and Scotland) are filled with sewage. Yet even Tories and Tory voters must know this, they must understand this is the consequence of their voting. They must understand if they need to see a doctor or go to the Hospital the lack of service is because they voted Tory and the Tories have only their immediate financial self-service as a priority.

England is dying. England is depressed. England has become the sick old man of Europe and it is because Cameron was too weak a man to face down the right wing lunatics in his own party and withdraw the whip from them. The right win is now fractured as we have Farage the racist in sight. Farage the man who as a growing child enjoyed singing racist Nazi tunes. The man who has two passports and can leave Britain at any time but chooses to stay here as he is a multimillionaire feeding poison into the vulnerable people who lack the initiative to both to understand Politics. 

I sincerely hope there is light with a Labour government now in power. But it is almost like the inevitable bath of self-destruction continues. It feels like Britain is now Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

An election at last

It is with relief an election has been called by the weak Sunak. A man who has never suffered the strife of real work his entire life. A man who doesn't know what it is like to not have two pennies to put together in order to afford his lunch. Because he has been closeted like an entitled Indian prince. Yet even the closeted can feel compassion and empathy. This man doesn't.

It's hard to wonder what he feels. But the suffering of others is not one of them. Unless he is an individual who hides his contradictions deep at an unconscious level. For them to come out years in the future with the question of how he might have done better for Britain. Again for some reason I don't think this matters. Though, a part of me hopes there will be a Karma effect on him and his family for what he has done to us all. If Britain was his own wallet, things would have been done differently. Funny how it is we hold civil servants to a higher degree of integrity than we do our politicians. Especially in Parliament, where rules are easily broken, what did have once unspoken codes of honour and expectations. But when put into contemporary, events are broken because we were ruled by a corrupt bunch. By egotistical maniacs who thought they knew best or even if they didn't it was a matter of being in power. Being in the public and getting exposure. Just so when it's time to leave, their nest is feathered with the prospect of limitless speaker gigs. For large fees. An hour gig giving a sudden six-figure sum into their bank accounts. Or so it has been with our joke of a PM Bozo the clown.  

This is not my country, I would not die for it. Given the opportunity I was live in Europe, my home would be a welcome place to strangers. But I can't go anywhere and have to sit it out. God may the Tory sewage infested waterways of our politics change in the next six weeks.

What is our true value?

 My wife said to me I should not be bitter. It's almost like a flaw in my character, I'm careful to try and keep it at bay but it's not always easy. For I believe my value, my worth, my abilities are higher than the cards I've been dealt. Perhaps this is why I have an innate dislike for Tory governments, or for Tories. It's the same old story being recycled over and over again. A Tory politician is usually one who has been educated in a private school. The more important the school considers itself and the higher the fees it charges then the higher the value the Tory politician acquires. This is the important bit. They are given the best of life's opportunities from birth to leaving education, their expectations are that they will become wealthy, do great things and the world owes them.  Just for having them breath air the world must pay them respect. Hence it is the class system kicks in. The worth of a Tory is the worth of the stepping stones they have placed gently in front of them as they grow up. 

In the imaginary world of meritocracy, the best people for the job rise to the surface, they are smarter, they are brighter, they stand out amongst others. It can be seen in their confidence of public speaking. In the way they dress, in the language they use, their accent and the connections they have. Tories therefore represent the class system, they like to see themselves as better than other people, and then they believe they are the ones who are lifting up the poor by paying their taxes. Or as we know in today's cases not paying but rather dodging the spirit of tax paying in any way they can. From birth to leaving education they are molly coddled, given the best holidays, given the best education in which it will be one to one tutoring or it will be in small classes. It is like they are being bred into a life and life style which is close to inevitable. Money is security, it ensures they never have to worry. They always get to sleep on a bed in a warm house and have more than enough food to satiate their appetite. But what really is their worth? Being given all the opportunities or indeed opportunity hoarding doesn't mean the positions they reach is because of their value. So why might this be?

Lets compare and contrast. A working class single mother raises two children, she rents her home, she has to work and must receive Universal Credit in order to make ends meet. She loves her children very much as does every mother. But she's unable to afford them the best independent education available, so her children go to a state run school. Where the classes are of extraordinary size, 30 to 33 pupils. The class teachers can't keep track and do their best. One to one tuition is near to impossible. However it doesn't mean these children are less smart. What it does mean is they have obstacles to overcome. They may go home and find their mother is in a mood, she's had a bad day at work. Mum can't spend as much time with them as she likes but she does her best. It's difficult, very difficult. Her attention is divided as a mother and as a earner. It is not meant to be this way it just is.  The children are happy in their family and with their mum. But there is no hand up. They may spend their time doing homework but if so it's because they feel like it. But children will be children and sometimes a TV set or an electronic play console take their attention. What is their worth? It is a lot to their mother but is their potential and their ability to be the best of what they could be given a chance in these circumstances? I guarantee it is not.

So it is. Today we have self entitled politicians who never had the same realities as their poorer cousins who may have missed a meal once in a while, or never new what a holiday was. Wealth and Toryism gives Tory children not just a step up, it gives them privilege, the privilege of being rich. Yet we then go and rate those Tory rich kids as being representative of meritocracy, when they are not. For example a certain politician whose name rhymes so well with Grease-Smug had a private education and considers himself to be above the commoner. Yet Grease-Smug is not actually a bright person. Smug may well have done exceeding well in education, I don't know, but I do know that education or ability to have done well was because of the education not because of his true value. Not because he is someone I'd ever follow into battle.

In British society we have individuals who will concede the value of Grease-Smug, these hat dofters and head nodders take on a subsumed post. I is like they have decided their true values is less than this individual. They have a place in society and their place is to be lower and less worthy of this person who has been silver spooned all of their life. It is class, it is because we live in a society why has the rules of unspoken classes bound within it like the DNA we each have. But class is fake, it is an advantageous system made to keep the wealthy in the best position generation after generation.

Getting to be the best at something depends on the chances given, the education received, the opportunities available it does not depend on being truly of merit when it comes to the highest persons in society. Usually the rich persons, the ones who have made it. The more I think about it the less I actually see of any high ranked person who doesn't have a few million in their bank account. 

This is my bitterness, my dislike. It is being valued at less than what I am. When I look around me there are people I see who are well worthy of meritorious positions. They are not Royals, they don't have the best educations money can buy but they are worthy much more than any of the Tory politicians we have in cabinet now.

Rigor Mortis of Bozo politics

 It feels like I am in an alternate reality, one which should of ended years ago but carries on going. Such is 12 years of Tory governments. My country is dying. My country has chosen a group of the worst sort of people to lead it. Bullies, self-indulgents, corrupt and without a care they are inflicting permanent damage on the lives of the innocents. This is not a country to be proud of, it is one which is trapped in a long lost era which has been hoodwinked and gaslit on those who have not questioned or reasoned what they are seeing or doing. We are at war with each other, a tactic which the Tories love because culture war means there is no class war. Throw a dead cat on the table and before it's had a chance to lose some of that rigor mortis, throw another dead cat, then another.

Bozo the clown leads Britain, a man who has only cared for himself in his life. A man who thinks everything can be made into a game and can be fun. It's a game he's created, he is the game master. He laughs and jokes at every opportunity as though no one can be anywhere as smart as him. Even though the reality is, he is not so smart at all. He is most lucky in his opportunities and his friends and his mates who don't care about what he is but more what he gives to them from the position he is in. Such is a very large intake since the 2019 GE. It's not just the blue wall MPs, it's every other MP as well. Without the clown they would not be there. It was the clown who imposed discipline on those who did not see eye to eye. No matter of their standing or experience, they had to be pulled in line and made to agree. So it is the Tory party is no longer ruled by sense and the delusion of trying to do some good. It is ruled by a liar who cares not about real life because he is wrapped in the cloak of invincibility. Does what he likes and he gets away with it.

It seems way too long to wait for the next election, and fortunately Labour is no longer run by a three legged donkey as a leader, but one who will blur the lines of established swing Tory voters and bring them back.

A message to a Tory voter

Imagine a few years from now, you've been to the doctor's, it was a little niggle, didn't seem much to start out at, then comes the waiting to find out more. Weeks pass, months even. An appointment arrives and a specialist takes a sample or two. There's another wait, this time a little shorter and you're called by the doc again to come in and have a chat. The doc says it's cancer, but they caught it a little late, you can have treatment to extent your life but it's inevitable. You will die. 

Then it dawns on you. You had voted Tory to protect the NHS, you had voted Tory to keep your job, you had voted Tory because it was your patriotic duty to do so, to keep the foreigners out, to keep Britain for the British. Yet, your specialist was not British, the nurse who took your bloods was not British and you're still dying. You voted Tory. The lie reaches it's conclusion. Were there really enough doctors and nurses to see you earlier seeing the specialist would of been quicker, getting on a waiting list would of been shorter and your life would of been somewhat longer.

Worse still now imagine it's not you but someone you love in your family, your partner, a child, an uncle or aunt, your mum. All because you voted Tory against your own best interests. You voted to decimate your own health care, you can't afford a private operation and why should you because you've been paying tax all your life. But the Tory reality is wealthy people pay little if any tax. They ensure their money is theirs and nothing is skimmed off by the state. A little like those very big corporations, the ones who have made a killing and made multimillionaires even wealthier. The likes of posh talking people. The likes of those who run tabloid newspapers. The very newspapers you read each day telling you to vote Tory. So lets ask the question. When did those millionaires and those newspaper owners become interested in you and your health? When?