Selection ... on what criteria?
Let me share my Australian experience. It may be of general interest. I am a fourth-year PhD student at the PRL, RSPhysSE, ANU. I am not even an Australian citizen yet (permanent resident), but I hope to become one soon. That is why I do not feel very comfortable criticising, but maybe, my "fresh" point of view can be of some value. My graduate study finishes soon and I have started looking for a job. I have discovered a couple of nuances in this process which, if corrected, can significantly reduce unemployment among science- and technology- oriented people in Australia. First, it is a common practice here to equip a position advertisement with the "Selection Criteria" (SC). It seems to be a 100 per cent Australian invention, but I am not quite sure. Before coming to Australia, I searched for a job in many countries but discovered the "Selection Criteria" only here. It would be okay if they would be intended for an applicant's information only (what is desired from him). Unfortunately, instead of sending your standard papers (letter of application, CV, list of publications, etc.) each time you have to write "the whole opera on the subject" responding to the SC for each particular case. Such a statement must be nice looking, have perfect English, you should carefully emphasise your advantages and diligently hide disadvantages, etc, etc, etc. For me it usually takes half a day of work, while I could send my standard "package" (without the SC) to five to 10 places a day. According to my observations, in each case it takes a hell of a lot of time from dozens of poor, unemployed scientists (or engineers), but greatly facilitates the work of one bureaucrat: Indeed, there is really no need to study a person's CV and other credentials when you can simply count the "match points" in the person's SC statement and direct his application further, commonly for recycling (or simply direct it into there if there is no SC statement). I am not sure what is the legislation concerning this subject (if any), but the real practice is as above. My second point are the "fake competitions". As far as I know, there is a certain "threshold" in position salary and duration above which a laboratory (or other organisation) is demanded to advertise the vacant position, even if the decision-maker (say, the head of department) already knows who suites them best. It is hard for me to say how often it happens, but it definitely seems to occur in more than 50 per cent of cases. Unless you have a good friend in such a lab, you will never figure out whether this is a real competition, or the winner is already known and you are just wasting your time helping others observe the law. Would not it be better to give the above Head an additional "degree of freedom" in these matters, to hire a person whom he will hire anyway, but after quite a formal competition? Let us be serious: this superfluous advertising does not help to reduce unemployment; the number of job advertisements in the newspapers only remotely correspond to real job opportunities, and in many cases this just distracts a job-searcher from the real search. Some things (like the free market, for example) do work better when you let them drift themselves, rather than when you regulate them to complete unrecognisability. And it is trivial to say that when both sides, the "service provider" and the "customer" (here, the above Head and the job-searcher, respectively), are not very happy with a certain government imposed regulation (restriction) and very often successfully avoid it, then there is something wrong with the regulation. Concerning the Selection Criteria in such a case, it looks like prospective "winners" often write them themselves (and I was told, this is really the case sometimes). Sure, you can always write the SC so that even Einstein would fail. For some people from Australia, whom I know, it was really easier to find a job, say, in the US than in Australia itself; sometimes, simply because this procedure is not so severely bureaucratised there. Strictly speaking, this is not the single reason, America itself is simply a large and scientifically mighty country. It would just be interesting to know whether there are any statistics showing how many science-and-technology people are now working in the US after being unemployed here, while employment opportunities for them in Australia, in fact, exist. Is not it a promotion of the "brain drain", really? Some people search for a job for months here, spending their time and taxpayers' money on practising writing SC-statements and applying for positions which are, in effect, already "occupied", instead of finding a job in a few weeks, having a worthy salary and paying taxes themselves. Igor V. Kamenski RSPhysSE, ANU