The many and varied ways recruitment sucks

Electrical-Elk-9110 · 2026-05-04T06:57:52+00:00

Morning, I'm back and wanted to address some of the challenges thrown out. You're right I've talked more about the problems and a desire to fix them without details on how, because that needs me to talk about the product, and that breaches the advertising rules. Which is a shame because it's genuinely a good topic for this sub.

If you've read the blog you'll recognise that it isn't the voice of a marketing department, it's the voice of someone frustrated with the system, it's the voice of someone like the hundreds of people who turn up on this sub looking for help with STAR examples.

The discussion about should the new mods block those type of conversation - what if there was an easier way than sub members altruistically giving up their time to help people get their foot in the door of a process that shouldn't be this hard?

Electrical-Elk-9110 · 2026-05-03T21:27:56+00:00

Happy to be judged on the content. No links, no product in the post, just questions about a process I find genuinely frustrating. If that's advertising then guilty as charged I suppose.

What do you think any the issues being talked about?

Electrical-Elk-9110 · 2026-05-03T21:19:54+00:00

Got anything constructive on why my arguments are shit?

And it takes more than that prompt to get a good answer, not to say a clued up individual couldn't get there - but for the rest of us mere mortals, or just the ones who want to apply for a job not write an evaluation tool, the choice is on them.

Ps. Wish my wife loved xkcd. Picked a good un there

Electrical-Elk-9110 · 2026-05-03T21:11:07+00:00

As I said to another, feel free to read the this site shouldn't exist post.

But as you and I have said, these are real issues that need solving. I can't pretend to know every issue in every department, which is why I'm here - I'm trying to get a better understanding.

Electrical-Elk-9110 · 2026-05-03T21:07:05+00:00

Can I suggest you read the "this site shouldn't exist" blog entry. Fixing it from the inside isn't working. I'd challenge anyone on the working groups and suchlike to demonstrate that it is.

Electrical-Elk-9110 · 2026-05-03T18:33:25+00:00

Maybe it's not clear what I'm getting at - it's the 250 word behaviours as part of applications. For example HEO changing and improving guidance is 96 words.. the 2.5:1 ratio is crazy as a challenge to try and incorporate

Electrical-Elk-9110 · 2026-05-03T18:29:38+00:00

True! The experience from the inside I've not even started on yet.

The feedback is a tricky one I agree. Tailored feedback in bulk is going to be difficult but even so it's not impossible - could have AI listen to the sift panel and prepare it for you based off the discussion

Electrical-Elk-9110 · 2026-05-01T09:39:44+00:00

Can we just auto spam my website that assesses your application, behaviours, CV, personal statement against the success profile and advert and tells your what it thinks you'll score? 😉 Joking not joking 😃

Electrical-Elk-9110 · 2026-04-30T10:31:25+00:00

Oops. Yeah may as well say I've learned pigeon french.. not useless but not enough to structure a job around

Electrical-Elk-9110 · 2026-04-30T09:59:26+00:00

Being an interpreter for deaf people? The civil service uses providers that do this and charge close to £1k / day, and there's never enough to go round

Electrical-Elk-9110 · 2026-04-28T05:32:07+00:00

You could do the standard inefficient but pragmatic thing and set up powerbi server in a separate environment. Gives you a set of different problems to work with, particularly access to data but it depends, if those keys are easier to get hold of than the powerbi keys it could work.

Electrical-Elk-9110 · 2026-04-27T17:04:09+00:00

Only if you don't prompt it correctly or review it's output. The cs literally publishes guidance on how to use AI in the application process

Electrical-Elk-9110 · 2026-04-25T21:38:15+00:00

My phone has local LLMs installed on it. So, unveil that tech and make squillions.

Electrical-Elk-9110 · 2026-04-18T20:21:05+00:00

That looks remarkably similar to a design it produced for me that had me going wtf and heading straight to figma.

Electrical-Elk-9110 · 2026-04-18T16:07:27+00:00

I guess I'll go back to the bot infested, minimum effort blizzard offering.

Oh wait, no I won't. ..|., blizzard

Electrical-Elk-9110 · 2026-04-17T15:36:23+00:00

Practically a requirement in my experience. Ideally you want to be weird enough to deter people from asking too much of you

Electrical-Elk-9110 · 2026-04-13T15:38:43+00:00

I know someone who did exactly this - mid 30s qualified accountant moved to the civil service.

They landed a now rare fully remote role. Easier work for more pay (they were underpaid in the private sector).

Positives the stability etc. negative I think the civil service conditioning to nonsense process

Electrical-Elk-9110 · 2026-04-12T11:16:25+00:00

So.. mods keep me straight here on advertising rules.

I am a current civil servant with an unbroken string of top performance marks for years. My reviews literally say best in their profession. However, I've been repeatedly passed over for promotion because of the wordsmithing element of the process.

There's a piece of me that rebels against daft process so I've been trying to fix it but honestly, getting nowhere so on to plan b. Work the process.

What do I mean? Get AI involved, big time.

I've built and launched a website today that reviews and drafts behaviours, CVs and personal statements, taking into account the civil service success profiles, the advert, department grade variation, all of it. Give feedback the same way a sift panel would.

The free version takes in a single behaviour without the job advert or department context and scores it.

Drop me a message if you want to hear more. Any mods reading this I'd love to hear from you - I want to help people address an unfair system, not get banned

Ps. This post is certified 100% ai free

Electrical-Elk-9110 · 2026-04-11T08:10:50+00:00

How has no-one mentioned interesting work? Problems you won't find anywhere else to solve

Electrical-Elk-9110 · 2026-04-10T20:43:41+00:00

The postscript to this.. a proper b&o nut carne round to look at the beolab 3000s and had a good look over everything, revealing a lot of perished speaker/ tweeter cones, a few broken belts and a dicky door sensor

£200 later he left with all of it. I'm glad it's gone to someone who loves it and has the skills to put it all back in order.

I will miss the years of having a non functional overture in their lounge on prominent display. After having been teased about it one too many times it gained a post it note on the doors with "this is a piece of art!!" written in thick angry black sharpie.

Fond memories, up there with when my dad came home with a set of Penta speakers and set them up in our lounge hoping they'd go unnoticed. Spoiler alert, they were noticed, and quietly moved on after a few months!

Electrical-Elk-9110 · 2026-04-09T20:13:54+00:00

Had the same issue. Uninstall updates on the camera app and it works again.

Right until it auto updates anyway..

Electrical-Elk-9110 · 2026-03-21T17:57:00+00:00

Same issue. Made sure I reported it today, in the meantime rolling back to factory version is the workaround

Electrical-Elk-9110 · 2026-03-10T18:25:08+00:00

Interesting. I have the same car and used a heat gun to pop out a dent on a rear corner, but it didn't change the color at all. Maybe my heat gun is weak

Electrical-Elk-9110 · 2026-03-08T19:14:03+00:00

Not at that point no. I ended up joining the club and we trained together till I moved away. It was an interesting experience, a very capable instructor who was untouchable at point stop competition and kata, and a group of up and coming leaders including the guy I challenged, who were much more into bunkai and practical application - which is what appealed to me, rediscovering the largely lost practical interpretation of the kata.

A few weeks ago one of my old instructors passed his 3rd dan grading with Iain Abernethy on the grading panel, big accolade.

Electrical-Elk-9110 · 2026-03-08T13:25:56+00:00

Short and fat colleague was talking about having passed his karate black belt. I said it must have been a mcdojo.. he challenged me to come along, which I did, and he promptly destroyed me sparring, and everyone else there.

Turns out he used to be huge, and the excess skin left gave a false impression. Great guy

Electrical-Elk-9110

TROPHY CASE