Monday
An hour with the delightful Sam, ostensibly to review our
progress on her new recruitment system. Some of the processes are
ready for testing, and we agreed to review the results
together.
What we need is a test recruitment, something fairly
straightforward and predictable. Unfortunately, we are not looking
for any accountants at present. In the end we agreed to ask the
director of development if we could automate the recruitment of his
new senior planner.
Tuesday
I rang Sam to tell her about the less than positive response I
got from development. It had involved the forced deposition of
"your bloody computer" into a personal place.
"Leave it to me," she said, and in half an hour she was back
saying he would be delighted to co-operate.
There is a meeting of the Town & Country Planning
Association in Hemel Hempstead next week, and she has agreed to
accompany him.
Wednesday
Charlie and I pore over the job description and candidate
profile for the senior planning post and use it to create our own
simplified character map, which Select will apply to score the
applicants for shortlisting. The profile runs to eight pages. Our
map is a little shorter and reads: pretentious (mandatory) over
developed sense of self-importance (mandatory) contemptuous of
"ordinary people" (mandatory) strong interest in concrete and
tarmac (mandatory) qualified in planning to degree level
(desirable).
Thursday
We fed the first set of applications through the system this
morning. This is a simple threshold test. For example, for this
post, the first pass is designed to eliminate any clearly
unsuitable applicants. It parses the full text of the application
and rejects any not including the words "framework", "community"
and "enhancement" (in the same sentence), and the phrases "impact
mitigation", "public realm" and "landscape character" (again, in
the same sentence).
I think we will have to tighten the parameters. Of the 17
applications processed, only one failed, and that turned out to be
one for the housing benefits assessor post that had been put in the
wrong pile.
Friday
With some refinement of the scripting we been able to automate
the creation of a shortlist for the post of senior planner. The
interview schedules and final selection scoring matrix have also
been prepared. When I say interview in the production version
interviews will be conducted by avatars in a specially constructed
metaverse assessment centre. However, in this pre-release we are
using SMS texting.
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