A year ago today, after putting in an application to the prison service, and passing the online assessments, I was congratulated by them and told I had passed and would be made a job offer… Knowing how short the prison service were, it was obvious that the offer would come soon, or at least that is what I thought.
Having applied for a role at one of the prisons, it was common sense that if a vacancy came up in another prison in the local’ish area I would he asked if I was interested. Again, so I thought.
Turns out this is NOT the case, and rather than saying I am interested in vacancies within X mile radius, you instead have to actively search the job vacancies part of the government website, and continuously apply for each vacancy.
In short the prison service have pool of people who have passed their assessments and are ready to go, just needing their vetting before being able to start. All you have to do is offer available roles to suitable candidates.
But no, that’s not how it’s done. No surprise then that they are desperately short of officers at this time.
In addition to this fact. I can also share that ONE YEAR to the day of passing my assessments, I received an email telling me “congratulations, we are happy to offer you a role at X prison”. Let me get this right… A YEAR?!
One whole year after applying, for some reason an offer was made. Clearly assuming I just sat around waiting for a role to be offered. If the roles were much desired and hard to get, I would understand it, but this isn’t a booking at an exclusive London restaurant, it’s a hard graft, high risk, and quite niche.
We keep hearing how the prison service is on its knees and desperate for staff, but meanwhile behind the scenes the recruitment is so convoluted people are applying, hearing nothing and moving on, just like I did. Bit of a dodged a bullet moment there!
When I did occasionally chase recruitment up, I was told they had no information to offer and just to wait to hear back with an offer. Imagine if I had just sat around, happy I was accepted and just waiting for an offer FOR A YEAR!
Thankfully as we know I applied to my current role and am happy as Larry now, and could not feel happier in my choices and the outcome. Of course it’s nice to know how many confirmed job offers I had from my applications in the end (4 out of 5) but seriously.
Even worse, this isn’t uncommon. I wasn’t forgotten about, this is just the process and others I know have waited the same time period. And no, it wasn’t for vetting etc, this was just waiting on an offer.
Just thought I would share that little story with you all. I could not be happier with how things worked out in the end. Thank heavens they didn’t offer me a role too soon or I might not have applied to LFB.