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Royal College considers no confidence move after Excel recruitment debacle

theregister.com

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Re: Royal College considers no confidence move after Excel recruitment debacle

#11

Post by KeplerBoy »

b112 wrote: post #6
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #3

The previous article that is linked to in the text is worth a read to: https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/12/excel_anesthetist_rec... "ANRO decided to honor the 10 job offers it had made by mistake and used Oriel to tell the candidates. Unfortunately, a system error in Oriel meant it then erroneously sent that communication to an additional 16 candidates. ANRO decided to honor these 16 additional offers too, and fin…

But that's insane! These candidates hold people's lives in their hands, and they just hured unqualified candidates!

What makes you think they are unqualified?

People get rejected because they are not the best fit, not because they are unfit.

Re: Royal College considers no confidence move after Excel recruitment debacle

#12

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

b112 wrote: post #6
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #3

The previous article that is linked to in the text is worth a read to: https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/12/excel_anesthetist_rec... "ANRO decided to honor the 10 job offers it had made by mistake and used Oriel to tell the candidates. Unfortunately, a system error in Oriel meant it then erroneously sent that communication to an additional 16 candidates. ANRO decided to honor these 16 additional offers too, and fin…

But that's insane! These candidates hold people's lives in their hands, and they just hured unqualified candidates!

> and they just hired unqualified candidates!

They're still people with valid medical licenses - the pool of candidates wouldn't have people who couldn't legally practice medicine, so I'd assume the qualification criteria they were being assessed on is unrelated to their ability to not accidentally kill me on the OR table.

Re: Royal College considers no confidence move after Excel recruitment debacle

#13

Post by helsinkiandrew »

b112 wrote: post #6
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #3

The previous article that is linked to in the text is worth a read to: https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/12/excel_anesthetist_rec... "ANRO decided to honor the 10 job offers it had made by mistake and used Oriel to tell the candidates. Unfortunately, a system error in Oriel meant it then erroneously sent that communication to an additional 16 candidates. ANRO decided to honor these 16 additional offers too, and fin…

But that's insane! These candidates hold people's lives in their hands, and they just hured unqualified candidates!

> and they just hured unqualified candidates

Hopefully not unqualified, just not the "best" available

Re: Royal College considers no confidence move after Excel recruitment debacle

#14

Post by codeulike »

b112 wrote: post #6
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #3

The previous article that is linked to in the text is worth a read to: https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/12/excel_anesthetist_rec... "ANRO decided to honor the 10 job offers it had made by mistake and used Oriel to tell the candidates. Unfortunately, a system error in Oriel meant it then erroneously sent that communication to an additional 16 candidates. ANRO decided to honor these 16 additional offers too, and fin…

But that's insane! These candidates hold people's lives in their hands, and they just hured unqualified candidates!

I know what you mean. But reading again the recruitment process was for "third-level specialist training position (ST3)" which I think is the 3rd year of a 5 year training. So everyone was in training, its just that the relative ranking got messed up. Its not like random people could apply. So I guess thats why they decided to honor their (frankly terrible) job offer fuck ups.

Re: Royal College considers no confidence move after Excel recruitment debacle

#15

Post by andrewstuart »

roenxi wrote: post #2

> Proposing the motion at this week's meeting, Dr Marks said: "I'm no expert on HR software, but I do know that manually copying and pasting from seven different Excel sheets, all laid out in different ways, is bound to go wrong one day. So who set up the system? Who set up the QA processes and the staff training?" This sounds pretty standard to me. Spreadsheet stacks are actually effective - and often robust if the…

No doubt there was never budget for HR software.

Re: Royal College considers no confidence move after Excel recruitment debacle

#16

Post by viraptor »

b112 wrote: post #6
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #3

The previous article that is linked to in the text is worth a read to: https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/12/excel_anesthetist_rec... "ANRO decided to honor the 10 job offers it had made by mistake and used Oriel to tell the candidates. Unfortunately, a system error in Oriel meant it then erroneously sent that communication to an additional 16 candidates. ANRO decided to honor these 16 additional offers too, and fin…

But that's insane! These candidates hold people's lives in their hands, and they just hured unqualified candidates!

> unqualified candidates

While this may be true, (but someone has to be the lowest scoring one - it could've been a group where everyone is great) keep in mind it was a list of candidates who are aware of their lowest scores, getting a training position in a place aware of their lowest scores, with 5 more years ahead of them. It sucks that it happened, but I think they'll be under extreme scrutiny/pressure now.

Re: Royal College considers no confidence move after Excel recruitment debacle

#17

Post by codeulike »

roenxi wrote: post #2

> Proposing the motion at this week's meeting, Dr Marks said: "I'm no expert on HR software, but I do know that manually copying and pasting from seven different Excel sheets, all laid out in different ways, is bound to go wrong one day. So who set up the system? Who set up the QA processes and the staff training?" This sounds pretty standard to me. Spreadsheet stacks are actually effective - and often robust if the…

Spreadsheet stacks are actually effective - and often robust if the Copy Paste technician has a little bit of nous

This is true. Sounds like they have cobbled together a system using Excel because thats why you have to do when processes change all the time.

The alternative is to find a 'proper' HR system to handle all the weird custom processes which is a massive three year project that costs tens of millions and then probably fails to deliver.

IT people complain about people cobbling things together in Excel but in the short and medium term thats usually the only way for people to get shit done

But yes management dropped the ball and should have had some checks and balances. No-one realised that every candidate from Wales got rejected? Thats a clanger.

Re: Royal College considers no confidence move after Excel recruitment debacle

#18

Post by andrewaylett »

b112 wrote: post #6
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #3

The previous article that is linked to in the text is worth a read to: https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/12/excel_anesthetist_rec... "ANRO decided to honor the 10 job offers it had made by mistake and used Oriel to tell the candidates. Unfortunately, a system error in Oriel meant it then erroneously sent that communication to an additional 16 candidates. ANRO decided to honor these 16 additional offers too, and fin…

But that's insane! These candidates hold people's lives in their hands, and they just hured unqualified candidates!

Not necessarily -- perhaps they'd found 26 suitable candidates, picked ten of them to fill their ten open positions, but accidentally sent offers to all 26.

Re: Royal College considers no confidence move after Excel recruitment debacle

#19

Post by DharmaPolice »

roenxi wrote: post #2

> Proposing the motion at this week's meeting, Dr Marks said: "I'm no expert on HR software, but I do know that manually copying and pasting from seven different Excel sheets, all laid out in different ways, is bound to go wrong one day. So who set up the system? Who set up the QA processes and the staff training?" This sounds pretty standard to me. Spreadsheet stacks are actually effective - and often robust if the…

Having worked with "spreadsheet stacks" for the last two decades I'd argue that although they can be effective in most cases they are error prone which is the point being made in your quote. And they become more error prone the more complex the "system" is and that's bad news because it's oh so easy to add more complexity whenever you want.

I agree the practices described don't sound strange - they sound normal, but so does the resulting errors that occurred - also par for the course.

Re: Royal College considers no confidence move after Excel recruitment debacle

#20

Post by DharmaPolice »

codeulike wrote: post #17
roenxi wrote: post #2

> Proposing the motion at this week's meeting, Dr Marks said: "I'm no expert on HR software, but I do know that manually copying and pasting from seven different Excel sheets, all laid out in different ways, is bound to go wrong one day. So who set up the system? Who set up the QA processes and the staff training?" This sounds pretty standard to me. Spreadsheet stacks are actually effective - and often robust if the…

Spreadsheet stacks are actually effective - and often robust if the Copy Paste technician has a little bit of nous This is true. Sounds like they have cobbled together a system using Excel because thats why you have to do when processes change all the time. The alternative is to find a 'proper' HR system to handle all the weird custom processes which is a massive three year project that costs tens of millions and the…

>IT people complain about people cobbling things together in Excel but in the short and medium term thats usually the only way for people to get shit done

This is true, and why I think it's a shame we never got a real replacement for Microsoft Access (not necessarily the functionality of Access but its intended purpose).

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