This is a photo of our new Agriculture Field Officer, Paulin, conducting a Pig Raising workshop with villagers.
The way he was recruited by CoDeC left a lot to be desired, although a recruitment process of sorts was followed:
- The job advert was posted on the local school noticeboard, with no job description or terms and conditions available to prospective applicants.
- Shortlisting involved 8 CODEC staff members meeting together for a whole afternoon, with no agreed person specification.
- Selection involved an interview, a written project plan and an observation of a one hour training session in a local village. On the face of it, this range of selection methods was good, but....
- The interviews were ridiculous: Each applicant was wheeled in, given a copy of the questions which the Director then verbally asked, while a committee of four people scored each response against a set of "ideal" answers which the Director had written. Nobody looked at the applicants at all, and no introductions were made!!! ( I couldn't let this particular bit of bad practice pass unchallenged).
- One question was "CoDeC may not get any money from the donors to pay you, so how many months would you be prepared to work for CoDeC with no salary?" (Guess what the "right" answer to that one would be!!)
- Applicants were sent to the area underneath the office building to write their project plan. Paper was provided, but nobody thought to provide them with chairs or tables!
- The observation of a training session in a real village environment was a good idea, but there were no agreed criteria that each observer looked for.
- No references were taken up, and none of the statements on the CVs were checked.
Fortunately, in spite of all of the above, Paulin is a very good new member of the CoDeC team.... and he is getting paid a salary!
and 7 of my 8 nephews and nieces in height order, three of whom are already taller than me - it has been so nice for me not to tower over everybody else for a change! The "quintessentially English" villages and pretty countryside around our base in Stow-on-the-Wold will give me lovely memories of England to take back with me to Cambodia.
