phil d
Well-known member
I applied recently for a job in command operations with my local fire brigade, basically I fancied a change and it seemed a decent job, ok so I'd have been a 'desk pilot', but hey wow. Anyway, I read the job description and all the usual stuff that goes with it and applied.
On Friday I received an E-mail saying I hadn't made interview stage, as I was not considered a suitable candidate, there was a vague reference made to my mental health issues, so I rang up to complain about being unfairly discriminated against. They immediately denied this and said the reason I had not made it to interview was that, although technically I had the right qualifications and experience to do the job, I hadn't actually cited instances where I had used my skills. In other words, I hadn't named actual situations that I had been in, so this led me to think, they'd obviously been in contact with the department I had worked in some years ago when I was a volunteer on the incident support team to check this out, but they actually wanted me to cite particular incidents, such as, 'attended a fire at a house in Acacia st Anytown and assisted the Smith family following a large house fire'. This, however, would have been in direct conflict with GDPR, in fact, when I was on the IST we were constantly told never to discuss specifics outside of work with anyone, although my family knew what I was doing, even they were not privy to exactly what went on. OK, I might have come home and said I'd been to a bad fire in say Warrington, involving a family with children, but that was as far as it went, I never mentioned the area, or anything else, it's not done. Now it would appear they were asking me to break their own rules to get a job, or more likely to disbar me from the job, on the grounds that I had breached data regs by telling them things in order to get a job, catch 22.
Anyway, last night I had a rather interesting conversation with a chap, he'd been responsible for installing and commissioning a certain piece of kit used by all police forces. recently a job came up for someone to operate this device in his local nick, he applied, he was doing fine until the face to face interview, at this point they realised he was disabled due to an accident a few years ago. Immediately they started making excuses about how he wouldn't be suitable for the job as he had a lack of experience! When he informed them that it was actually he who'd installed it, and taught them how it worked several years ago they became all obstructive.
Ok, he's classed as disabled due to physical injuries, I,m classed as disabled due to mental issues, we both get knocked back when they find this out,and yet there's supposed to be all this about positive discrimination for the disabled, well from these experiences it looks like the only thing going on is that, you can be positive they will discriminate against you.
On Friday I received an E-mail saying I hadn't made interview stage, as I was not considered a suitable candidate, there was a vague reference made to my mental health issues, so I rang up to complain about being unfairly discriminated against. They immediately denied this and said the reason I had not made it to interview was that, although technically I had the right qualifications and experience to do the job, I hadn't actually cited instances where I had used my skills. In other words, I hadn't named actual situations that I had been in, so this led me to think, they'd obviously been in contact with the department I had worked in some years ago when I was a volunteer on the incident support team to check this out, but they actually wanted me to cite particular incidents, such as, 'attended a fire at a house in Acacia st Anytown and assisted the Smith family following a large house fire'. This, however, would have been in direct conflict with GDPR, in fact, when I was on the IST we were constantly told never to discuss specifics outside of work with anyone, although my family knew what I was doing, even they were not privy to exactly what went on. OK, I might have come home and said I'd been to a bad fire in say Warrington, involving a family with children, but that was as far as it went, I never mentioned the area, or anything else, it's not done. Now it would appear they were asking me to break their own rules to get a job, or more likely to disbar me from the job, on the grounds that I had breached data regs by telling them things in order to get a job, catch 22.
Anyway, last night I had a rather interesting conversation with a chap, he'd been responsible for installing and commissioning a certain piece of kit used by all police forces. recently a job came up for someone to operate this device in his local nick, he applied, he was doing fine until the face to face interview, at this point they realised he was disabled due to an accident a few years ago. Immediately they started making excuses about how he wouldn't be suitable for the job as he had a lack of experience! When he informed them that it was actually he who'd installed it, and taught them how it worked several years ago they became all obstructive.
Ok, he's classed as disabled due to physical injuries, I,m classed as disabled due to mental issues, we both get knocked back when they find this out,and yet there's supposed to be all this about positive discrimination for the disabled, well from these experiences it looks like the only thing going on is that, you can be positive they will discriminate against you.