You are definitely correct that the Queensland Government has a requirement to advertise every job vacancy externally. And as you surmise most of them are going to be filled by the person acting in the role already, or someone within the department who wants that role. And sorry to dash your hopes but believe me, that ‘internal’ person is not necessarily going to be more qualifed than an external person applying for that position far from it.
No I don’t work in the government myself, but my wife was lucky enough to get in about 12 months ago now. I’m convinced that it was just due to brute overwhelming competence. She had 12+ years experience as a Legal Secretary in big corporate firms, including being PA for partners in these firms. So that when she applied for a position as a PA to an Executive in the DPI, I think she must have stunned them.
Not to get sidetracked about general government bureaucracy from some of the stories she’s told me, (and there are some doozies) but since it’s virtually impossible to get fired for incompetency, they need to find somewhere to send those people.
In terms of should that system of external advertising be required?
I can understand why it’s there, and given what came out of the Fitzgerald enquiry I think I support the idea in abstract. But as you’ve found, in practice it makes for a lot of wasted time. The essential problem is this - They are adhering to the letter of the rule not the intent - an intent which IMO is the same as private enterprise to find the best qualified and closest fit for the role.
That all certainly matches up with my experience trying to get mid-level jobs with the State Government, GreedySmurf and stories I’ve heard from other people.
I’ve discovered that a helpful tip to avoid a lot of the hassle is to ring the contact person for the advertised position and ask them two questions:
“Is there anyone currently in this position in a temporary capacity?” and
“Has anyone else within the Department or the Service expressed an interest in this position?”
If the answer to either of those questions is “Yes”, then thank them for their time and cross the job off the “application” list, because- unless you’re obscenely qualified (as GreedySmurf’s wife was) you’ve got no chance of getting the job; certainly not if it’s a mid-level administrative position or anything like that.
Even if the answers to those questions are “No”, that’s still no guarantee that they won’t decide to do without the position or amalgamate it into someone else’s job description, or that there will be a hiring freeze or budget readjustment or something that means no-one gets hired anyway.
Certainly I agree that the requirement is a good intention and a good idea in theory, but in practice all that happens is a lot of people get their time wasted, get put off applying for Government jobs on the “I’ll never managed to get one” theory, and so the Government’s potential pool of “outstanding” candidates is greatly reduced because the people with the skills and talent go and work in the private sector where it doesn’t (generally) take three months to tell someone the position has been filled/lapsed.
One possible highlight, or opportunity for you though Martini - if this is an experience you’ve been having recently, it would’ve been far worse than normal lately, as after the most recent election there was a massive reorganisation of many government departments, merging, new structures, etc, etc which still hasn’t been fully completed yet.
So there are a lot of advertised positions where: A) - it’s not just a temporary person in the job but the actual permanent person who has had to re-apply, B) - there are a fair number of ‘spare’ people around some departments that have to be slotted into places.
So unfortunately while that is going on there is even less chance of an ‘outsider’ snagging a job just at the moment. It should all be settled within the next couple of months though so hopefully then they might be more likely to look outside.
Thanks for the info, GreedySmurf. It’s not something I’ve been experiencing purely recently though- it’s been my experience of trying to apply for State Government Jobs for about the past five years or so. Still, in a few months I should have my MA and might have more luck applying for things then…
I don’t know. I only know what my husband told me, because, at this particular time, he’s trying to transfer to the VA hospital that is closest to our home.
Does anyone else find a certain irony in legislating efficiency into government hiring so people can have an easier time find bloated beuocratic benefits-laden government jobs?
If we park for a moment the assumption that government jobs are bloated, bureaucratic and benefit-laden, it seems to me that public sector recruitment practices – whether legally mandated or not – serve two objectives:
To enable the government as employer, to get the best-qualified person to fill the job.
Tho give everyone who wants it the same opportunity to demonstrate that they are the best-qualified applicant for the job.
No offence to Queensland, but I would have thought that past history there shows the need to articulate these objectives, to take them seriously, and to develop and implement practices which reflect them.
If a government agency is running a competition for a job which they have in fact already filled, the problem is not that they are running the competition, but that they have filled the job in advance of running the competition. I don’t think we solve this problem by deciding that they don’t have to run the competition.
It may well be that the best-qualified applicant is an insider, or is already acting in post. If you think about it, there are many circumstance in which that wouldn’t be a surprising outcome. The fact that insiders are often successful in open competitions doesn’t, in itself, mean that the competitions aren’t fair, or are rigged, or are not achieving the objective of finding the best-qualified applicant, and of given all participants the same opportunity.
There may be circumstances in which it’s not appropriate to run an open competition, and there should be a protocol for identifying those circumstances. But “I like the current deputy for this position/person acting in post, and wish to appoint him” is not such a circumstance.