13th June 2011, 10:20 PM
kevin wooldridge Wrote:Interesting post from Jack....I was in conversation with a relatively senior archaeologist this past evening who told me he personally had instigated a policy of only employing recently graduated archaeologists and certainly none with more than 2 years field experience. His arguement to support this policy was that any archaeologist with greater than 2 years experience was overqualified for the posts he was offering (basically field assistant) and by that stage in their career should be motivated more by their career development than their need of a job.
kevin wooldridge Wrote:I don't quite understand how this has turned into a 'cull everyone with more than 2 years experience' thread. I think the point my friend was trying to make (and with which I concur) was that he wasn't going to recruit anyone to the lowest grade of archaeological excavator i.e tranee, beginner, call it what you like, who had more than 2 years experience, I checked with him to clarify that he did not intend this of course for more senior positions eg supervisor, Ass Supervisor, Project Officer, specialist.
I don't quite understand how David can be against this proposal. Surely BAJR jobs stipulates that trainee posts should be for trainees and not an excuse to employ experienced staff on a lower wage?
I must be going mad, because how on earth can you be over experienced as a site assistant with two years experience? The more experience the better surely! "Site Assistant" should not be viewed as a "Training" position, as this is above the "Trainee" pay grade. If it is felt that recent graduates are essentially trainees, then they should be put on this pay grade. Logically according to your friend, you will have a site of trainees, run by one or two trained archaeologists (which I suppose is fine if the job wants to be done on the cheap).
If some one is employing trainees as site assistants, then this should be investigated by BAJR, as this leads to a nonsense in terms of pay grades; i.e, what on earth is the trainee grade for if they are being employed as site assistants? As experienced site assistants can be paid up to ?17,523.82, is this a way of keeping pay down by paying trainees the minimum site assistant rate of ?15,704.64 and passing them off as fully trained staff, when the reality is very different. :0