National Recruitment Service - HELP

sam30

Hi everyone,

I can't find any thread on boards.ie about it and I can't understand why TBH. I and many of my colleagues (health professionals) have had nothing but trouble from the NRS so I am just trying to see if others have had negative experiences with them if you are willing to share. My experiences with them have ranged from totally mixing up the panel I was on, offering "my job" to the wrong person, denying fault and 8 months later admitting fault with no apology or an improvement in dealing with the matter, ongoing rudeness and ignorance on the phone, even at the top management level where they even told me there was no point appealing their mistakes (probably not as the people you write the appeal to are sitting at the next desk). However, I did contact the office of commissioners to voice my concerns and was told that the NRS are not answerable to them. When I enquired who they are answerable to they said they are their own agency!!!

I realize that I may have been extremely unlucky with them but let me summarize the average experience so you get an idea of what I am talking about: we have a few employees (mainly female) sitting in a couple of offices in Manorhamilton (I have been there and seen the set up) who are dealing with all of the information that comes into them when professionals go to Dublin for interviews to be ranked on a panel (which you can sit on for years without a job offer). If you are lucky and they don't have a database entry mess up them you might get ranked as the interviewers graded you (however they have made entry errors here too). Then when a job finally comes up and you express interest in it it gets moved to another team in the same building called "contracting" who's job it is to ring a couple of referees to check you out and to post the garda clearance form (that you filled in yourself) and this team are saying that they are 3 months in backlog before they can even get to spend the 30 mins it might take to do this piece of work and issue a contract. Now my question is: in the middle of the most severest HSE recruitment freeze we have ever known, how on earth could the NRS be 3 months backed up with what are very basic administrative tasks. I think this has to be the most ineffective service of the lot. The impact of this ineptitude to put it intoa broader context is that it has taken a year for me to get from expression of interest to still no contract and 1000 patients have gone unseen in that year who are in pain and suffering. It is most frustrating and according to the Commisioners there is nobody I can voice my concerns to who can improve this situation.

I realize that this might be a little disjointed for those of you unfamiliar with the process but would appreciate some perspective here. Am I expecting too much? Anybody else out there had similar experiences?

Mrs OBumble

Moving to Health Sciences, someone there might know more?

Mods - if you don't want it, feel free to flick it back to Work and Jobs.

sam30

thanks a million

Dingle_berry

Yes colleagues and I experienced similar stuff in 2010*. Ridiculous procedures like expecting people to bring a stack of documentation to interviews, this being copied at interview and then having to post originals to letrim if offered a contract. Ignoring emails, sending confusing email offers, unhelpful answers, etc. I personally got the impression that they don't care. I luckily have a job in a voluntary hospital now but would avoid dealing with Leitrim if at all possible.

One thing I would recommend that you and your colleagues do, which we stumbled upon by chance, is to get a copy of the interview scoring/report. This would both show you where you did well, could improve AND if you could compare it to your colleagues you could get an idea of where you should be on the panel in relation to each other (as well as compare answers etc!). It used to be standard practise to issue these but now you have to ask for them.
*EDIT probably 2011 not 2010..... Good luck with them! Keep an eye out for jobs in the voluntary hospitals lol

cw girl

I've been informed that I'm now on a panel for a HSE job. Is there anything I can do to ensure that I don't encounter any of the issues spoke about above. I'm thinking maybe ring Manorhamilton routinely etc? Thanks