Remember the ALMO

Here's another rubbish recruitment practice...A number of adverts have come up for jobs that appear to be in Leeds City Council - or the 'ALMOs' that were set up to decrease tenants rights and generally to pretend that they're a nasty private landlord and not the democratically elected Council. So the first question is why are they paying an outside firm to advertise jobs? I advertised a small number of jobs in my last job and it cost precisely nothing - and we got loads of applicants.

The second question is around who is eligible to apply. One of their essential criteria is 'enhanced CRB check in place'. So that's anyone who doesn't know what this is or doesn't have one ruled out. I do have one as it happens and as far as I'm aware they're not transferable, so they'll need to get one for the successful applicant anyway. I noticed one job dealing with adaptations for disabled people. I thought of all the people (myself included) who could apply. Perhaps someone with a disability themselves or someone from an advocacy group - or just someone with a brain who can listen to people and find out what they need, cross reference it with what's realistically available and take it from there. So what's the next essential criteria? It's "Minimum of 12 months experience of working in an environment that deals with adaptations for disabled people, preferably within a large (ideally public sector) organisation" So that'll be someone who's either already doing this job or has done this job then.

A cynic might think that this looks like theis advert is for people applying for their own job in 'not the Council' but it certainly means that a load of people who might be great at the job can't apply.

As it happens I've dealt with hundreds of Council tenants but I can't apply for any of these jobs because I've never done it in a housing department.

Am I bitter? Yeah! I don't make enough money from music to give up work completely and these people seem to be wasting everyone's time. I smell a rat! Call the man from the ALMO!