It's broken.. fix it!

Something in society is broken.  Seriously broken.  Irrevocably broken? I hope not..

It's how we value people.  How we assess people's value.  How we score people.

None more so than when it comes to recruitment.  This might be suicide, but then.. I don't know that I could do any more of the "right" things and get the wrong response, that maybe the right thing to do is the wrong thing, to get the right result...

Confused yet? Don't worry, so was I..

I have attended 3 of the new HR saviour.. Assessment Centres.  It allows employers to assess larger numbers of people, for a small handful of positions, instead of the traditional one on one interview.  Some aspects are good - I've succeeded at 2 of the assessments when it comes to the group activities.  But the standard procedure is that you do the group activity first, followed by some kind of psychological or abstract reasoning/cognitive ability test (which I score well on too), and ending with the interview.. By which stage I'm exhausted, and then I get the behavioural questions... Think of a time when.. Tell us a time when you did this...

I'm the first to admit my history isn't brilliant.. I have way too many short term positions on my resume, and I'm not proud of it either.  But I can't change it.  I've learnt something from most positions, and seem to able to convince people I have potential.. Except those that can put the food on the table and pay my bills.

So I get scored, I get valued, and I fall short.  It doesn't take long to make me question my own value.

You're going to get a lot more out of me if you talk to me about my strengths and the things I'm good at, then if you ask about my weaknesses and the things I've failed at..  I know what I can't do.. I've tried it, failed.  Tried it again sometimes.  Failed again.

Yes, there's no guarantee that if I try something new, I won't fail again.  But I'll try anything..  And guess what?  I might succeed beyond my own and your wildest dreams.

My family deserve me to have that opportunity.  They don't get counted into the scoring when it comes to HR, yet they wear the consequences.

And then they wish you all the best with your future job search endeavours, after emaciating your value, and by extension the value of your family.

We talk about being a society that values family, yet by actions demonstrate otherwise.

Something's broken.  It needs to be fixed.-