Any body remember when the federal & state governments had a "public service board"?

Young Australians leaving the education system, after junior, senior, tech college or university could fill in a form, sit an entrance exam, apply for a public service job, could opt for plodding along, unskilled &/or do further studies part time while working part time, etc.

Who destoyed this stable system?

Who politicised the public service, chose to "outsource"?

Oh yes, it was the closet communists again wasn't it? Comrades Whitlam, Hawke, Keating, Dunstan, etc, "modernising", "reforming", all of which are weasel words for communist sabotage & failure agenda.

The left's aversion to fact/truth becomes so clearly evident by the lack of flak to fact/truth-based threads such as this one. Now that they've been playing ostrich for some years by sticking their head into the sand the consequences are simply too overwhelming even for the lefties to respond with their trademark lack-of-integrity based nasty remarks.

Recruitment agencies are businesses and it pays to put 'bums on seats'. I worked in an agency for a short time hiring temps and have been a 'candidate' many times and have seen the view from both sides.

Many times I was interviewed by a young person who had never worked in the public service and had no idea about the position they were recruiting for. Agencies use young people with little experiene because they come more cheaply. Not all agencies are 'mickey mouse' agencies some do hire more mature people and ex-public servants who do possess relevant knowledge.

The Commonwealth Government is outsourcing more and more functions and positions despite the mantra of 'equal pay for equal work'. Where agencies are paying the wages directly casuals sourced from 'labour hire' groups are paid less per hour than their permanent counterparts sitting side-by-side doing the same work. Even with the casual loading the rate is lower often by a few dollars per hour.

There is a big push to outsource lower level functions such as mail opening, courier services, scanning, shredding of secure documents and of course the early stages of the recruitment processes.

My pet hate is the generic selection criteria which often has little to do with the work actually performed. I have seen a number of times people being told they were not selected for interview because they did not have a background in 'X' (eg. law enforcement) yet the selection criteria did not mention anything about that requirement or they did not possess a skill such as fast typing which was also never mentioned. Sometimes the opposite happened where the successful candidate turned up and could not do the job because the basic work skills required were not included as part of selection criteria. Generic selection criteria is lazy and encourages incompetence.

They are very often meaningless especially when you can pay $200-$600 to get someone to write the application for you. It has become a business in itself just to get people to the interview.

I have worked through Recruitment agencies as a contractor for about 10 years and have tried to give consideration to the tough market it must be.

I have become conditioned to not expecting a reply on supplying a CV although some do, some don’t. It’s not something that bothers me but nice when it happens. Although I’ve been doing it for a while, for someone in more precarious financial/employment circumstances perhaps they might feel different.

I have also become conditioned to not expecting any communication after submitting a job application, besides confirmation that it has been submitted, unless I get an interview. Thinking about it, I really would rather someone following this up after they’ve sought me out and then me putting in several days work for the application.

What has finally given me pause to wonder if I can get work without using these agencies is the fact that for 4 out of 5 job interviews for contracts this year through 3 agencies, I received no contact after the interview to advise that I was unsuccessful without me chasing them up weeks later (or just concluding after a while that this must be the case). Not nice and not what I’d expect of HR professionals.

I wish federal government wouldn’t predominately limit some contract work to multiple and exclusive panels that only these agencies have the resources to get onto - complex tender responses, high insurance etc and then also complain fairly consistently about the obviously higher rates that must be charged to cover agency costs and margin but assume the individual contractor is earning.

I must agree with Pelican...I hate selection criteria, but the system does not seem to think it can work without them. They mean nothing and are a poor substitute for life experiece.

I have sat on numerous panels (in government) and been appalled at the systems' attempt to absolve itself from all responsiblity of the selection process by trying to put all the onus on the applicant's responses to criteria - which can run into reams of dribble. I would happily dump the selection criteria and rely on the CV, cover letter, and an interview process.

Any half-intelligent person can bluff their way through the criteria, but when you are talking to their referees and putting them on the spot with an interview question - that's when you learn most about them.

And these criteria also put an artificial emphasis on paper qualifications over actual ability to get a job done, as others have pointed out. This is really annoys me.

What HR recruitment does is dumb down the process so much that anyone with any intelligence and integrity withdraws.

I think this is a reflection of the people who work in agency recruitment offices. They are not the sharpest tools in the shed. They seem driven to want to 'help people' but really, if they wanted to help people, they should do volunteer work - preferably overseas.

I don't know why corporations and the public service have added ANOTHER layer of bureaucracy in the form of HR. Lord knows Australia's public service and administrative protocols are Indian enough.

I have jumped through many recruitment hoops in my life time to get a job, and then when I finally score a position, I look around the room expecting to see Einstein's - but no. All is see are people like me who can rig their CV's, selection criteria and interviews to what HR people want to hear. There has got to be a better way.