More Public Sector Recruitment Bollocks
Recently Jacob made an excellent post on the idiocy which characterises public sector recruitment systems.
I was reminded of this today when I saw the advert for Newham Council’s graduate scheme: Any discipline (min 2.2), although must have lived in Newham, have a family home in Newham or have graduated in Newham.
I have never seen such an idiotic manifestation of local patrtiotism as I do here. We are talking here about an area of london a few miles saying ‘whoever we employ its got to be one of our own.’ Clearly this is the way to make sure you get the best possible candidate.
Reader Comments
Don’t they do this to ensure that applicants have reasonable local knowledge/connections?
Rudolph seems to be suggesting that if, for example, I lived in Waltham Forest or Tower Hamlets, just over the border from Newham, I would not have ‘reasonable local knowledge/connections’, whereas if I lived on the other side of the road I would have good enough ‘local knowledge/connections’ to qualify for this job. As someone who lives on the border of Islington and Camden, I can vouch for the fact that it would very peculiar indeed if my local knowledge and involvement ended 100 yards up the road and didn’t include the school my children attended, the shops where we buy our groceries and the GP surgery to which we belong.
To disqualify masses of candidates in this way is ludicrous, counterproductive and taps into a stagnant and reactionary concept of identity and behaviour, which is at odds with the dynamic and creative ways in which real people relate to their localities and communities.
Margaret Thatcher may have smashed and dismantled the Greater London Council and the Inner London Education Authority, but London continues to exist, and, fortunately, the Border Agency doesn’t police the borough boundaries — yet.
But Julia, that’s obviously a deliberate reductio of my question. I think it’s fairly obvious I was wondering (not stating that this is the case) if the aim of the policy was to harness the benefits of local participation in local politics. I’d disagree with such a policy anyway, but I was wondering if that, rather than bare local patriotism, was the reason (misguided though it might be, as a reason) for the policy.