Disorganized, Confusing, and Unequal.
The public sector employment application process is onerous and I know because I have both experienced being a candidate and being the employer interviewing candidates. As an employer in the public sector interviewing candidates, the reason to make the application difficult and onerous is to discourage outside candidates from applying because you have an internal candidate that you want to put into that position. As a public sector agency, you are required to make it appear that you conducted a fair and equitable interview process. In reality, outside candidates never have any chance of advancing to receive an offer.
The Alameda County Water District (ACWD) application process involved eight very wordy and multi-faceted questions. For example, one question had 7 parts, one question had 3 parts, and two questions had 2 parts. Judgmentally, the application process had 18 essay-style questions. The application questions were so specific that with respect to 2 questions, only an internal candidate would have the specific and perfect experience they claimed as required. This meant that any transferrable skills, such as software implementation was essentially disregarded. As an outside candidate being on both sides of the metaphorical interviewing table, I knew from experience what was occurring, but I wanted to make them work at reading my application and allowing me to at least interview. The extra onerous questions as part of the written application process made the interview process unequal because only an internal candidate would have the granular experience ACWD was asking for in the written interview.
I was invited to interview after submitting my 5,694-word application. Their HR department called me to inform me of the process and let me tell you that it was confused, disorganized, and unequal. The HR person stated that their process was going to require candidates to log-in to Zoom 20 minutes prior to the actual interview which seemed out of the ordinary and it was. In all public sector interviews, similarly to non-government jobs, 5-10 minutes early is reasonable, not 20 minutes. The HR person explained that the reason for this was that they were going to provide candidates, via Zoom, the questions to review prior to the interview. This is a nice gesture that is not normally done, further, in a normal interview situation, candidates never know the questions prior to the interview. Now ACWD has two deviations from a normal public sector interview process, an extra onerous written application, and releasing questions to candidates via Zoom prior to the interview.
One the day of the interview, I logged in to Zoom 25 minutes early at 2:45 pm for my 3:10 pm interview, to allow for any technical problems that might have occurred. I closed all my internet browser windows including email and turned off my phone so that I could focus and concentrate on the soon to be released questions in the Zoom meeting room. After 10 minutes of waiting, I thought they must just be running late which is not at all uncommon so it did not raise any alarms for me. At 3:03 pm, I thought I'd check my phone for any messages and sure enough, there were two voicemails. The first one arrived at 2:55 pm and the second one arrived at 3:00 pm. The first message stated they were running late and not to worry. The second message said that he'd sent over the interview questions at 2:50 pm. Understanding from my phone call with the HR person that the questions were going to be released via the Zoom meeting room, his message made no sense, at first. But, then it hit me that without telling me and likely all the other outside candidates ACWD changed their stated interview process at the last minute. Instead of releasing the questions via the Zoom meeting room, as I was told was going to happen in the phone call with the HR person, ACWD decided to email the questions. As I said earlier, I had all my email browsers closed and my phone ringer off so as not to be interrupted with a ringing phone or other audible alerts during the interview as any professional should. I did not get into my email and retrieve the interview questions until 3:03 pm or 13 minutes passed when I was supposed to have received the interview questions via the Zoom meeting room. The disorganized change in the interview process left me confused and at a clear disadvantage.
When the interview finally started at 3:13 pm, the HR person asked me if I saw the questions that were sent over and I explained that the questions were supposed to have been sent via Zoom not emailed and that I had only had 10 minutes to review the questions and not the promised 20 minutes. The response I received was, "well the panel is ready, just do the best that you can." The HR person might have well said, although you never stood a chance from the beginning, good luck with our disorganized, confused, and unequal process."
