You worry me.
The interviewing staff weren’t happy with the applicant, couldn’t put their finger on it, they gave answers for joining which varied from the mean average of what other people usually say, so their offer of services was declined.
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This bloke must have been blatantly obvious, or, the staff doing the interviewing have real life experience of interviewing people for similar roles to pick up on anything. I’m not sure ordinary staff would have noticed anything in a chat and we’d be kidding ourselves if we said differently. A former Wg Cdr said to a group of us we must all be odd to do this, so how odd must this bloke must have come across in a chat when you consider some of the staff around ie walts and wannabes, who have and still manage to get through.
Let’s put it this way, the OC wanted them in. Another (impartial) OC and a WSO who don’t have experience of wrong 'uns had enough cahones to say there’s something not right here. Maybe it’s the calibre of staff we have. Maybe we are just more experienced at it. Maybe we take safe guarding very seriously and are happy to turn people away even though we need staff. Maybe all.
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We turn away people because we just aren’t happy with them, and I struggle the see why anyone would have a problem with it - that’s what the initial interviewing and recruitment process is there for, its not just a begging session, its another part, along with DBS etc… of the gate keeping infrastructure.
I’m not remotely surprised that Prunes sqn pinged a wrongun, the proportion of wronguns who manage 50 years of undetected wrongness is not large, and the definition of ‘just not Happy’ encompasses more than just kiddy-fiddling, it could be light fingers, or ‘odd’, or walting, or delusions of grandeur or just a bit if a throbber.
Most of us make decisions regularly about the kids we do and don’t want our kids playing with, about the parents we do or don’t like, based on nothing more than instinct and ‘feeling’ - and they often serve us well - so why should we suddenly lose those instincts when we become ACO staff?
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My experience of these types of extra hurdles is that they slow down the process to the point that we lose potential staff that we desperately need.
Cis are not uniformed staff and should not be treated as such, they are un paid volunteers giving their time, effort and experience as and when they wish. As someone who works as a contractor in an environment where IR35 is a reality each step like this takes us worryingly closer to the Inland revenues ‘disguised employee’ definition.
That has implications that I for one do not wish to contemplate.
i think the principle is sound - that its wise if someone outside of the Sqn hiarchy ‘signs off’ on new members of staff after a 15 minute chat in private rather than some kind of box ticking exercise by WHQ - thats not to say that i don’t share concern that if you recruit a potential member of staff, send them home with the BDS forms, and then call them in three months saying ‘your DBS has come through, now can you wait another 2 months until someone can interview you and sign you off…’ we’re going to find that many of those potentials don’t bother returning…
i don’t think it needs to be a Wing Board, i don’t think it matters whether its a WSO/Sector officer, or a member of staff from a nearby Sqn, what matters to me is that someone from outside the bubble has an informal/formal chat to see if the spidey sense should have gone off but didn’t because its the CO’s/WO’s best mate.
that shouldn’t put more than a week on the process, and actually needn’t put time on if its done while the DBS is in the pipeline or hasn’t yet been applied for…
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We are all in “the bubble” and they don’t just have to be the CO or WO’s mate to be seen with rose tints. I don’t see WSO or someone of the sqn only chats as being any sort of barrier to ‘undesirables’ of any sort, not just the potential kiddy fiddler. What interests me is that prior to checks being done, there wasn’t anything like the process we have now and we never had any problems. I’ve been involved in taking on probably a 15-20 or so staff over the years and there hasn’t been a problem with any of them wrt how they are around cadets, apart from the usual one of being overly familiar with older female cadets especially, which you see all the time at camps and wing events, which goes beyond the professional and anywhere else could be considered flirting. I’ve been told that I’m considered as stand-offish with older cadets male and female, but I see it as maintaining a professional distance.
We could eliminate a lot of this with a more modern approach to DBS clearances, rather than our snail mail, paper chase, which would eliminate the time factor. Yes a DBS could show clear when it shouldn’t (comparison with MOTs is fitting), but that’s the system everywhere uses with formal interview processes and occasionally fingers get burnt. But if you consider we only do RAs to give us a “get out of jail card”, if the “RA” for new staff includes DBS, regrettable but things get through the net. One way we could give ourselves a better system is ‘professional’ references rather than someone who has known you for a couple of years, including mates. This would be more in keeping with job applications which require references from current/former employers or professionals who have known you personally for a defined period. For cadets applying they cannot use current or former ATC staff. In this way you get a better view of the potentials or at least the same as proper employers.
Have an interview by all means but it must not be or include “a when are you going into uniform” element as a number of WSO see this as the main reason for joining as adults. I lost 2 CIs 18 months ago because the WSO had a chat with them when they started and couldn’t take a not interested as a serious hint on three occasions. They walked because they felt that people in the wider organisation were idiots.
Any interview should standard questions with the CO and WSO (the CO has to work with them after all) questions about; their work, family life and other interests, how they found out about the Corps, what they think the organisation is, why they want to join, what they think they can bring to the organisation, what is expected from them, what they can expect from the organisation and some CP questions. Of the last part I would not expect the majority of people to have a clue unless they worked or been involved somewhere where they would have had reason to be involved in CP.
Err, read the book. That’s been a requirement for years. Employer, if not employer someone who has known you for three years+ AND professional standing.
The latter option is too open and ex-cadets in my experience struggle as they haven’t worked long enough and been out of education too long to make teachers valid referees. I would expect an employer (current or former) to have known you for at least 2 years before being able to give an objective perspective.
It’s largely a moot point. Employers often don’t know what you are like with kids. I’ve never met any ex cadets who fall outside of the requirement not to provide references* who can’t find someone who fits the criteria. Family friends who are cops/degree qual/local or national government usually step in
*ex cadets who’s records can be accessed don’t need to supply referees if they left withing X months. I forget what X is - I always have to look it up.
I find with Ex-Cadets it’s usually someone within the organisation they go to.
On the news of Sir Clement Freud’s indiscretions, I wonder if any of the celebrities highlighted over the last few years would have been caught and refused by ATC people interviewing them if they came to the ATC to be staff? DBS would probably come up as a blank. I imagine any references would be from an impeccable background.
I like to think I would have noticed there was something dodgy about Jimmy Saville!
Really?? Honestly???
So Jimmy or Rolf comes along to your squadron at the height of their fame and says I was an ex air cadet and I want to give something back to the organisation. You get the paperwork done and they get a few people as references, all of whom say he’s a a great guy but you are able to deduct he’s a raging paedophile against what everyone is saying??
Sorry but I think your deluding yourself, the fact he got away with it was because it was being covered up and he was above reproach. The only way you would of found out was when he was getting hands on with a cadet by then it was too late…
Sad as it is we cannot see everybody for who they truly are until they are willing to show us…
The new CI who gets into uniform turns out to be a egomaniac
The cadet you think is quiet and timid but turns out to be a vicious bully
The other cadet who is always happy and joining in but is being abused and is scared to tell anyone
Until people are willing to show us who they are we will never really know them, we can think we know and we can suspect but we cannot really know.
actually, yes.
if you read the reports - the proper reports, not the rubbish in the papers - the thing that leaps out time and time again, and in organisation after organisation, is that there were people at an operational level in every organisation he used who were deeply unhappy about him and his behaviour.
the problem was that either they didn’t report it because they assumed everyone else knew and that it was OK, or that they did report it and it went nowhere, with the inference that further reports would not be welcome.
the BBC report, for example, reports the producers of his programmes (Jim’ll fix it, Top of the Pops ETC…) having ‘Savile rules’ - that he was never to be left alone with Children/Young people, that the door to his dressing room was never to be locked. such rules did not apply to others… it reports confrontations between producers/directors and Savile over the presence of Children in his car, dressing room etc…
the screaming conclusion of the BBC report is that everyone who worked with him knew that he was somewhere between unsavoury and a child rapist - the BBC’s corporate reaction was to mitigate his ability to do these things on BBC property/time, with the veiw that what he did outside of that was between him and the Police.
the direct equivilant of that is that some people at Sqn level being unhappy, but those above them being unwilling to take action - either because they felt they dodn’t have proof, or that they were simply unwilling to take action and they had no interest in whether proof was available or not.
so yes, DBS etc… is one prong of the fork, local feeling is another.
But unless the interviewee is exceedingly creepy and semaphoring ill intent is it really going to be caught at the interview stage?
Saville built up a portfolio of suspicion over time which should have kicked off official investigation but that was some way down the line, especially since most of his work took place at a time where a certain level of behaviour that is now cause for arrest was simply the way things worked.
My concern is that, without evidence, what grounds would we have for refusing the appointment of a CI based purely on a gut feeling? “I’m sorry sir, but I don’t want you on the unit because I imagine you are some sort of pervert” is liable to cause problems. Having the WSO there to corroborate a “vibe” is sensible, but then what?
Yes we are all about safeguarding but great injustice has been done in the past due to hysteria without evidence and we also have a duty to treat adults fairly too.
No one unless they are stupid on a level that would mean not being able to walk, you will only know after the fact.
How well do we actually know what anyone does “behind closed doors”, that’s anyone relatives, neighbours, workmates, friends etc etc. This can be anything in terms of interests, some harmless some potentially not so. I recall in the late 80s we found out that one of our managers and his wife were naturalists and swingers, harmless enough but odd. They had kids so who’d have guessed.
I don’t think it would matter in terms of references, as how many would actually know about their proclivities? My “CV” has 5 non employment references so if I needed to I would pick ones to suit the job being applied for.
If you outlined reasons for rejection for staff being based on an unfounded hunch in this day and age you could well find yourself on the wrong end of something expensive and damaging to the organisation. If ‘selection’ of staff is based or found to be based on something that cannot be properly determined or we just don’t like them and someone felt aggrieved and made it public, who the hell is going to volunteer as staff in the organisation. While it appears some champion this stance it’s not right, if we are going to reject people it has to be based on something that we can substantiated.
You mean like David Attenborough, Gerald Durrell and such?
when are we going to start?
personally, i don’t see the unfairness angle - firstly because i don’t see any unfairness to an individual in other individuals simply not wanting to play with them, and secondly because the ACO is very happy to have subjective, personal judgements made about its people every day. the OC’s judgements about whether to put someone forward for Commissioning/SNCO, the WSO’s judgement about the same, a Wing Board for CI’s, even Sleaford tech are making on the spot, subjective judgements about people they don’t know and massively impacting their futures.
this is no different.
Sorry meant naturists.