Sunday, 29 June 2014

Job advertisement letter


To whom it may concern,

 My daughter has been looking for a job for a while now and when she was looking the other day she came across your position at Flipside Media to be a Digital Video Production Producer. As always she asked me to read her application before she sent it off and I asked her to show me the job description although the position sounds engaging, running my own Marketing business and sending out applications for job roles within my business I know that this is not what a job description should look like. I am sure it was a simple mistake you made and if so I would just like to inform you of the mistakes you have made so you can correct them and not make the same mistake again in the future.

 The first issue I spotted, yes there is more than one, is that there is a wide gap between different hours and salary “£15000 - £35000 per annum + benefits”. I know that the contract probably depends on how much experience someone has but there is a rather large gap and could go against the Quality Act 2010 if it relates to pay equality.  The salary is a big difference because the salary gap is so big I would have thought you would have followed the salary bands where depending what job you are doing and how much experience you have you would then get paid more as you work within the company. The legislation is that you should only have your employee work 48 hours and you follow that but you don't have specific working hours and need to specify “Between 10-45 hours per week (variable)”. In other position descriptions they show the days you would be working as well as showing the time they will be working from too.  

 Another issue that I spotted was that you were looking for a specific age “male/female (aged below 30)” which is going against the Equality act as you are discriminating people on grounds of age. I can understand if you were an acting agency searching for actors but you’re not and even though my daughter is under that age it’s not fair you discriminating the older generation as they could be just as good at the job as a 30 year old or younger. I also love the idea that you are a religious company as I am Catholic but it doesn’t give you the right to say that you only want other Christians to join your team “Religious views: Christian”. It’s breaking OFCOM rules. To see the OFCOM rule that you are breaking which is meaning of ‘seek recruits’ you should not try and persuade other people to join your religion http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/broadcasting/broadcast-codes/broadcast-code/religion/. I am also giving you the link to show you other equality acts that you could be going against such as age, religion and pay.  http://www.ofcom.org.uk/about/equality-and-diversity/

What you did do right was the main body of the text showing what you require. What I have a major issue with is that you want them to plan and produce a short documentary “plan and produce a short documentary that can be shown to children at high school promoting No means No date rape campaign”.  They are not working for you so they are not protected by your rights therefore they could get into trouble just for trying to get an interview with you. “You should interview teenagers and other individuals who might be/have been affected, by the topic including female victims and male offenders”. You are asking them to interview people they don’t know who have been abused because they are rape victims therefore are vulnerable people which would make the audience of primary school children feel awkward because they might not be ready to watch a real life stories about people who have been abused. You also want them to re- enact what has happened which is obscene because you said you wanted to show the footage to a high school which could raise social concerns “you should compliment the interviews with re-enactments’’. This is not a good idea because it would remind the victims about what happened to them and could scar the high school children depending on how real it seems and could raise social concerns. Another thing I spotted is that you want them to have a soundtrack which could pressure them into breaking copyright laws as even though you have given them £20 to make this production getting permission to use the songs would cost a lot more money. I don’t know if you have heard of it but they would also need to get certificated by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) to see if it is suitable for high school children to watch it and I think it would be rated a 15 because it includes sexual violence. Here is a link to the 15 certificate rating and what makes it that age range http://www.bbfc.co.uk/what-classification/15. This will also go along with OFCOM rules where children are people under the age of 15 and content cannot be shown to them and hurt them mentally. Here is a link to that page which tells you the rules you need to follow http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/broadcasting/broadcast-codes/broadcast-code/protecting-under-18. If they don’t proceed to do the Documentary will they still get an interview?

One last thing that I would like to state is that you don’t want them to apply for other jobs if they are successful which is okay to say but it doesn’t come across like that. As well in the clause you want the to promote the ideals of Christian and if they are not Christian how will they know what you want them to add? It’s good that you will give them the £2o back but is that only for the person who gets the job?  It comes across as if when they send their application to you that they aren’t allowed to apply for other positions that are the same. So if you don’t mind please can you make that clearer?

 I hope you take into consideration what I have specified that you need to correct and I hope this will remind you not to make the same mistake again.

Yours Sincerely

Lauren Gadney

1 comment:

  1. Lauren,

    You have made a good start and achieved a pass, you need to quote from/mention the following in more detail to get a merit:
    - quote The Equality Act
    - quote The Obscene Publications Act
    - Quote the BBFC
    - Last paragraph - why is it wrong? (prove it!) mention copyright, mention religion section of Ofcom and mention exclusivity clauses.

    Good start,
    EllieB

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