7th July 2005, 01:22 AM
Quote:quote:As for requesting them only to make the employer/unit appear professional? Zark off! Don't you think we've got better things to do with our time than to request more totally pointless (in your opinion) bits of paper (no, don't answer that but you would be surprised how much work rather than tea drinking is required while you lot are out of the office having a whinge break).
I'm sure you'd rather believe that I'm a clueless moaning site monkey, but I stand by my only slightly flippant comments. I have recruited staff myself and am well aware that even a truthful CV can be very misleading. It's called spin, and we all do it. References only partly mitigate against it. I've seen good references given to bad employees to get rid of them! Not recently admittedly, so I'd be very interested to see if the referee would be taken to a tribunal.
I've also seen a litany of bad recruitment practice that should end up in tribunals, but never does. The archaeological industry is very very bad in this respect. I recently argued with my boss about the new statutory dismissal procedure; he flat out denied that it had anything to do with him. Look it up if anyone doesn't know, it's a very interesting change in employment law with regard to archaeologists.
So reading between the lines is essential. Things like; did the employee return to an employer or has he/she had a string of different employers? Did said employee get incrementally longer contracts or were they all short? Were all the sites rural, or is there a good mix of rural, urban, surveying, fieldwalking, research, commercial? That sort of stuff. All common sense, and probably more useful than a "yeah, he's a good bloke" reference.