Once again, I have been too busy lately to write a post… requests for training and preparing people to take the SLE tests are pouring in endlessly… and I had to run last minute marathons with the ones who woke up a bit too late in the process… useless to mention that they are devastated even before starting training!

Yet, in this absurd process, great news keep coming in… for instance Stefan, who had been in the SLE testing process for more than five months, finally got the results of his oral interaction test last Friday. He got his B!… he is now relieved although he will have to wait probably a long time before he knows whether he got the position he applied for or not…

Congratulations Stefan!

Aaaah… the hiring process in the Public Service of Canada!… I really do not know if I could sustain such pressure myself… probably not, merely because I have no patience for red tape administration and I have zero tolerance when it comes to stupidity. I know I would be the worse civil servant ever!… Indeed, either I would quit the job after five minutes or they would fire me after my first day!… But I know my limitations and I would never apply for any government job positions!… I do believe it takes lots of nerves to work there… and, in many ways, I do admire those who can do it and adapt…

What frustrates me the most is probably the inconsistency of the hiring process… Of course, the numerous written exams, the long fake interviews and the SLE testing basically stay the same… as well as the order they have to be taken. Yet it does not mean that change does not occur between the beginning of a competition and its ending… and some modifications are major and quite unfair…

Take Krystal’s case for instance… she had applied for two distinct full time job positions within the same Department here, in Ottawa, more than a year ago… She went through the whole hiring process without losing faith, although she shed some tears once in a while… She was a real trooper!

In December, she was told that she would receive a letter of offer soon… with that information in her sleeve, she came to Ottawa to look for an apartment… she found one, but she lost it because the promised letter never came in… she was quite disappointed and angry… two weeks ago she told me she had given up and she was convinced that she had fallen into the cracks of the system. Well, I knew she had not… because it is part of this endless painful process… no one actually cares about the candidates who are kept in the dark regarding their fate… they have a process to abide by and they will never show initiative (sometimes I do wonder if they actually can think on their own!)… consequently they do not return desperate calls from candidates or reply to their emails…

I was right!… Last week she was contacted by a manager… one would think that Krystal jumped to the roof with joy, right?… Well, not quite… she was indeed angrier than ever!… What was a permanent full time job when she applied turned into a one year contract job!… Now, the question is: will she take the risk to quit her current job in Toronto to move to Ottawa, not knowing if her contract will be renewed?… But, for now, there is no rush since she has not heard from that individual yet…

As for Corey… this one is certainly invincible when it comes to harass these people!… At the beginning of December, he had started asking questions about why he had not received his reading comprehension and written expression tests results after more than six weeks… of course, his contact in the Department he applied never dared to answer…  Being an excellent Google researcher, he found a website where he was able to chat with a real human being about his concerns… after the Holidays, he resumed his conversation with this individual… in the meantime he had contacted the PPC directly and they had sent him his results… Like Krystal, he thought he had fallen into the cracks of the system since he had met the language requirements, but had not been invited to take the oral interaction test.  To make a story short, it appeared that no one had been informed of their results and he was asked how he had received his!… His answer was simple: “Because I did ask personally the PPC to send them to me!”… Kind of hilarious…

Two weeks ago, he finally got an email… he forwarded it to me and, both being too excited, we did not take the time to read it… assuming it was his invitation to take the oral interaction test on January 29, we booked several sessions for his final sprint… then I did read the email and I realized he had been called for a job interview! Duh!… Okay, it was not what he was expecting but, at least, he knew he had not been forgotten in the maze of this absurd hiring process…

At the end of the interview, he was told that this permanent full time position had been turned into a six or nine month contract (depending on their budget) but that he would be called back in 2011 since he would have seniority!… For a while, he was tempted to withdraw from the competition since the position is far from being his dream job… yet, as an immigrant who came to Canada on his own will two years ago and who is only a permanent resident at this time, he knows he has to start somewhere… also, he wants to take the oral interaction interview so that they will have his language profile and he will be able to apply for more interesting and challenging positions in other Departments.

Of course, he thought this interview was stupid… he spent 13 years with the UN, going to third world countries in state of emergency, managing the aid budgets, taking care of logistic and leading teams of hundreds of workers. Therefore simulating a phone conversation so that they could assess his enunciation skills was kind of pitiful… without talking about their petty questions… But, he went through this interview gracefully…

To conclude, as I said before, I could never go through such a ridiculous process myself… And I truly admire individuals such as Krystal, Corey and many others I met in the course of my practice… I think it takes lots of courage… and je lève mon chapeau devant autant de détermination…

Maybe we all need to have a good laugh so that we can put things into perspective… a reader sent me a link to a video of Gory Bateson singing “Telle est la question”… I listened to it and I thought it was really funny! His pronunciation in French is so excruciating!… If you are in need of laughing instead of crying, watch this video here…

“Heureux les amoureux sur les montagnes russes”

Jacques Prévert