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I would have thought that his point is that a good majority of applicants are "fucking" useless and a waste of time. Unfortunately one never finds out until the interview and the offer is on the table. You then sometimes wonder why you bothered with them. In fact you bother with them because you need someone with certain qualifications and experience to do a particular job. I have seen people turn up after blagging an interview to reveal that they are totally unfit for the post advertised. They just hope that they can blag the job. Hiring is difficult and it takes a skilled interviewer to weed out the dross and consequently save time and money for the company. I have experience of the other way around and I have left a couple of interviews after sussing out that what they wanted was not what they advertised for. My last job and my present one were offered after rigourous interviews and where I obviously filled the criteria.

Talking of Bus Drivers we had a lad at school who always wanted to drive a bus. He got a job as a bus driver 26 years ago, is still doing the same thing and is among the happiest people I know. He is well read and travelled but driving a bus makes him happy. Too many careers advisors are filling in quotas not listening to their clients.

"I would have thought that his point is that a good majority of applicants are "fucking" useless and a waste of time"

And my point is that the purpose of a recruitment process is to end up with "reasonable" candidates in the job advertised and this is what William states they have ended up with.

Of course in a world where jobs in many parts of the country are in short supply and there are guidelines provided by the Job Centre as to how many jobs the unemployed should apply for, there are always going to be many people applying who are totally inappropriate for the jobs advertised. This is normal.

" Unfortunately one never finds out until the interview and the offer is on the table."

This is untrue as anyone who has been involved in the recruitment process will know. A glance at some CVs in which there is no relevant experience, very poor spelling, grammar and self expression, jobs started and left very quickly etc. etc. would automatically suggest that these people are not appropriate for the job advertised and interviewing them would be a waste of time.

I couldn't agree more. The Labour Party's fixation with increasing substantially the number of people attending university was misguided.

There are more people churned out on BA Photography courses in the UK each year than there are professional photographers in the whole of Europe. I spoke to one graduate from the Blackpool College which has an excellent reputation for its photography courses and only 1 out of 35 had got a job in photography 3 years after graduation.

I bet the College doesn't mention that statistic at interviews for prospective students.

We need to get back to a situation in which training as a plumber, electrician etc has similar status to doing a media studies degree.

Just out of Interest did you have a variety of ethnic groups applying for the positions ? and if so how did the attitudes, ability and educational standards pan out across these applicants.

I only ask because I often read how children of Asian families and immigrants in general in the UK excel at school and very often outpace english children, I have often wondered if there was any actual truth in this.

There is truth in this -

The asians excel at academic but lack with the interpersonal skills - found that they tend to be secular and dont like to mix with the locals. Best I have found believe it or not are eastern europeans for work ethics. Any I have hired tend to work as requested and will not have any sick days.

Finding the im owed a living mentality frequent and prevails in the city areas or from kids from disinterested families....

Despite the high unemployment to company I work for are also finding it very difficult to recruit suitable staff.

The company is only around 20 people.

I dread to think of the total cost both direct in fees to the agencies and indirect in the time spent trawling through CV's to short list any worth interviewing, interviewing them, if considered worthy appointing them initially for a 3 month trial with the cost of existing staff spending time ( trying to ) train them as well as the wages paid to them.

Last year we took on 4 we thought had potential but terminated their contract after the 3 months trial period as they showed little or no potential.
Hence the equivalent of a years salary paid out with any return we had more than offset by the hours others spent with them rather than doing productive work.

Currently we have two part way through their 3 month trial, one is showing some potential and likely to be taken on or at least the trial period extended, the other we are less happy with although still better than some so may well get an extension to the trial period.

Graduates with 1st class degrees seem no longer to have the ability to apply what they ( supposedly ) have learnt over the previous 3 years to the real world or the ability to experiment and research solutions.

With the shrinking of industry since the 1970's plus company takeovers and management by finance ' experts ' whose priority was short term profits and returns for shareholders rather than the long term future of the company most apprenticeships disappeared. Hence many real world skills and practical ' hands on ' experience has been lost rather than handed down.

Ok let me give you the other side of the coin here.

Firstly, my situation is that I have found that after 30 years (next month) of being involved in porn that I am prejudiced against for that very reason. Trying to get employment at say the BBC, ITV, Channel 4/5 etc or any type of 'mainstream' film/tv production company is impossible due to the '30 years factor' (and before the umpteenth person says lie, how do I hide 30 years of porn in any kind of CV or showreel ?). So I can ONLY conclude that 30 years in porn is far worse than 30 years in jail. At least ex-cons get rehabilitation !

Now onto my wife. A week before Xmas her company asked her to resign, she started there in July 2012 and after an initial 3 month trial to learn the job basically, she had 3 months in which to achieve the 2012 sales target. She achieved 82% of a 12 month target in 3 months, coupled with 75% of next years target. Her company decided this wasn't good enough and said they would sack her without a reference or she could leave with a glowing reference. We have come to the conclusion that they continually do this to avoid paying anybody any commission - WHAT A BUNCH OF CUNTS !

And onto her job hunting before and now again after the above. We find that most jobs advertised just don't actually exist. They are just permenant ads placed by companies to find that 'special person' then they create a job for that 'special person' or of course most don't even reply to her applications including the agencies that are so called in charge of recruiting.
My wife is an extraordinarily clever person who has two degrees, one in Law and on in Teaching, speaks two languages (English and Russian) fluently (to teaching standard) and is stunning looking.

Her problem is - she is Russian. Racism isn't just about colour !

perhaps you should do what I know you do so well Dave, put the missus in a bikini and let me give you Shaft's phone number

With regard to agencies, you are absolutely spot on Dave.

What agencies regularly do is:

1. Invent jobs in areas in which they operate and advertise them to get recent CVs from potential applicants in case a real job might turn up.

2. Get as many CVs as possible on their books in a particular industry sector so that when they do their sales pitch to a prospective new client company, they can show the company the wonderful range of people they have on their books.

3. Tell you that you have been put forward for this non-existent job and get you to agree to this agency being the sole agency dealing on your behalf. That way if the non-existent job does materialise you are prevented from going to another agency.

It's a jungle out there.