A colleague advised me that a local FE college was advertising some teaching posts, so I thought I'd take a look. This bit of the advertisement caught my eye:
Please note: Successful candidates will be required to undertake an enhanced DBS check prior to commencing work (this is to be paid for by the individual at a cost of £44).
Now this is a hot button of cuntitude for me - in my view, anything absolutely essential to one's employment (like a DBS clearance) should be paid for by the employer, otherwise, it's just another tax/barrier to entry for candidates.
Such cuntitude was not a surprise to me, given that I used to work for this particular employer, and resigned 5 years ago in high dudgeon when they started demanding that I practice in a fashion I considered to be unethical. So I thought I'd check it out, and rang to profess an interest in the post.
I learned a couple of things.
First of all, they were surprisingly eager to progress my "application", wanting my name and contact details from the outset. I said that this was an anonymous enquiry at this point, and I had a few questions. Two of which were: "Would an extant DBS clearance obtained via a different employer be acceptable?", and "Can you confirm that you're seriously expecting your staff to pay for their own clearances?". After much umming and erring, came the answers, "No", and "Yes".
I thanked them, and informed them that, on that basis alone, I would not be interested, which seemed to come as something of a surprise to them.
But...REALLY. Where do employers get off doing this kind of thing? It's a brilliant selection filter to ensure that your successful applications are desperate, gullible, or don't actually care very much about the details. Not attributes I'd imagine are desirable in teaching staff. All for forty-four fucking quid.
But then, like I say, I know this employer. I suppose I should be glad it wasn't a zero-hours contract.
