Image description: The words “The second time podcast” in black text on a purple background. There is also a sketch of a computer and mouse.
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This website is the only place which has the script for the episode.
I know some platforms and apps have automatic transcriptions but I cannot endorse AI and will not take responsibility for their accuracy
Episode Script:
Welcome to The Second Time Podcast, I’m Vanessa Smith. This is the end of my fourteenth week of job hunting.
Last week I wished for a quieter week, and I got it this week.
I spent a lot of of time trudging through temporary recruitment pools – lots of them closed with the end of the financial year which means you have to reapply to be in the new pool each year. That was half this week – applying for a lot of government jobs. They’re very fiddly and take time, even with my fairly efficient ways to apply. Most of the fiddly parts are the manually typing information into their database fields. Actually, maybe it’s the unpaid data entry that is the feature of this week.
I did so so so many of them that I had been putting off. I think businesses or government departments need to consider paying applicants to apply for jobs – because we’re effectively doing free data entry work for them. It’s a form of outsourcing and I strongly dislike things being outsourced to me without my consent. (By the way, when I say things that are outside the norm, such as “pay me to do data entry for you”, people often assume I don’t understand why something is the way it is and they try to explain it to me. 99% of the time, I understand perfectly, I just fundamentally disagree with the norm and I am loud about norms I disagree with. That’s a long winded way of me telling you that I don’t care if you think prospective employees should do free data entry.)
I’ll talk another week about time tracking and productivity “things” like that, but I did around ten hours this week of applying for those fiddly jobs that require a lot of manual data entry. So while I got my wish for a quieter week, it was also mind numbing and soul destroying levels of boredom.
While I’ve been job hunting, I’ve been copying and pasting poor quality job ads so I can go through them from time to time. That’s what I’m going to do today, share some ads and discuss where improvement can be made.
A job tagged as Remote / Work from Home:
“To limit emissions and time spent travelling, candidates living within 30-45 minutes drive of our headquarters are strongly encouraged to apply.”
Which says to me that it’s not remote, they’re lying. Baffles me that companies, who often put so much money and time into their image, think that it isn’t damaged by lying to prospective employees.
Here’s one with lots of the word flexibility.
“Full-time, office-based position with the flexibility of up to two work-from-home days per week, subject to business needs. Flexibility to work outside of normal office hours as required and within reasonable expectations.”
This ad says “You must be flexible. The business may not be flexible to you”. It reeks of an old fashioned and out of date era where workers aren’t humans, just resources.
This next one was a government job:
“Please detail any special requirements you may have if you are asked to attend an assessment event or interview (e.g. difficulty with stairs, vision impaired).”
This is still focused on in person attendance. Assuming in person attendance is possible or even desirable is not inclusion. Also, “special requirements” is akin to saying special needs. Outdated. Needs are not special, because all humans have needs.
More illogical location based requirements:
“If based in Sydney: a combination of remote working and in person attendance. If based outside of Sydney: Remote working on a permanent basis will be supported.”
To me, this implies that the tasks of the job can be done remotely. I don’t see why it matters if my home is in Sydney or not. The tasks are what matter.
Some feedback I received after an initial application:
“Regular attendance in the workplace is an important component of the role to support collaboration and information sharing.”
There are other ways to share information other than face to face, in person. It’s not the employees responsibility if the employer lacks the skill to communicate in other ways.
Here’s a rare good one:
“COMPANY NAME does not use AI to shortlist applications as while we use the selection criteria to assess applications, we are also interested talking with people with different and diverse backgrounds and experiences. Sometimes we only know what that is when we see it. AI can’t help us with that.”
Top notch, five stars, no notes.
Another good thing happened this week. I was chatting to someone about a job I had recently applied for. They had noted my accommodation requirements on my resume and asked if I needed anything else in order to participate in recruitment. That is exactly how easy it is to be inclusive – just ask. It’s so easy and so, so few prospective employers are capable of doing it. If you’re an employer listening to this or reading the script, learn from the good ones. By just asking what a prospective employee needs you’ll rocket yourself to the top 1% of workplaces for inclusion. The bar is so low, you can take these moments and become a leader so easily.
This week for the mutual aid corner I’d like to highlight Phonakins. She lives on the DSP and dedicates so much time to helping her community. I usually ask before I feature someone but this week I wanted to do it as a surprise because it was her birthday this week. Happy birthday! Check out the links in the show notes and if you have capacity, consider buying Phonakins a treat for the special day. We all deserve treats.
Links referenced in the episode:
- My job hunting processes
- Phonakins links:
Recorded and edited by myself, Vanessa Smith.
Intro and outro music by Ben Dawson.
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