Shit things you are paid to do to people

[Godzilla Bankrolls]

My job involves screening and selecting candidates (via the telephone) for numerous positions within various companies. It isn't too bad; I'm the one in a position of power and I don't get much hassle off the people I 'interview'. Best part is calling my candidates up after their face-to-face to tell them they've got the job.

Now, all the companies I recruit for have strict guidelines for the sort of employee they're looking for; for an airport job they'll need a five-year checkable work record, for a customer service role they need to be able to give me some bullshit about the customer coming first, for some jobs they'll need to pass a little spelling test.

I have to screen engineers for a national gas maintenance company. However, their screening criteria is set up in such a way as to be irrelevant - there is no way you can fail, as long as you have your Core Safety ACS certificate and less than three points on your driving licence(unless I personally decide they're a cunt who doesn't deserve a job, and don't bother completing their application).

This wouldn't be so bad if they had an army of field managers who could conduct 30 F2F interviews each week. But they don't. There seems to be about 6 - nationwide. And they organise interview dates seemingly about twice, maybe three times a year, each time giving me about 5 days notice to call up busy candidates to see if they can interrupt their work schedules to attend an interview which could take them 2 or 3 hours to drive to. This differs from other companies who give me a quota and interview schedules to fill before they place an advert for a role - nice and smooth. So, out of a waiting list of about 1000, about 30 people may actually be seen each year, if they can manage to actually attend an interview. In practice though, its very hard to fill up an interview date - out of ten slots, I might ony get 6 filled.

Last October, 5 'lucky' people got through this incredibly slow and frustrating process, and were told that they were successful. Now we just had to wait for one of our existing employees in each candidate's respective area to become free so they could train 'em up. "We should be contacting you next month", I told them.

When they heard nothing the following month, they all called in. "I'm afraid we're still waiting - can you call back next month?" I said.

This carried on til a few weeks before Christmas, when I personally advised them to carry on looking for other jobs, as I felt there was no way to actually guarantee them the positions they had been promised by my higher-ups. But we should be calling them next month...

In April, letters were sent out telling them they would definitely be contacted in May regarding the roles. May came, I spoke to them and said we would definitely have something by the end of the month.

Today, I've been given the task of calling all five (ranging from newly qualified to seasoned gasmen) and telling them, nope, we ain't gonna be taking you on. Because this is a shit and incompetent company, I want to tell them. Guh. These are burly blokes too, tradesmen.

So! Anyone else have to do completely shitty things to innocent, hopeful people in their jobs?

[Waking Life]

I've had to tell some that they are declined for Critical Illness protection based on medical grounds, but that's not too hard to do although there have been tears.  Being the bearer of bad news isn't something I'd ever really want to do in my job.

[Godzilla Bankrolls]

Fuck!

Yeah, I suppose being a doctor or a nurse would be the worst job for being unaviodably shit to people. But then again, they have training to do that, don't they? Similar to the way they get you to handle cadavers within your first week at university - seperate the boys/girls from the men and manly women.