Posted: Thu Oct 27, 2005 2:38 pmI worked for Glasgow museums for a while. It was a temporary contract, and while I went on to work elsewhere, many of those who started with me managed to get full time work with the council working in the museums department.
It wasnt exactly a closed door recruitment policy. Most of those who started with me (around 20) were unemployed/underemployed graduates looking for a start in museums or other arts - related employment and none (to my knowledge) had ties to the cooncil. I certainly did not. Apparently there was a huge mumber of applicants - over 1,000 IIRC - for the 20 odd jobs, only three were full time. The jobs had been advertised externally, so it might have been tough for them to justify giving the work to the offspring of cooncilor McPockle or cooncilor McFiddle.
One issue is that staff turnover in the council (at least in the area I worked in) was actually quite slow. The council tended to actually look after its staff, which was a good thing in some ways, eg when the cleaning in the museums was put out for mandatory competitive tendering, rather than sacking all the cleaning staff they were retrained as "museum assistants" and the museum assistant job expanded to include cleaning duties. However, this also meant that there were staff with serious drink problems or basis literacy/numeracy issues who they could not shift.
It wasnt exactly a closed door recruitment policy. Most of those who started with me (around 20) were unemployed/underemployed graduates looking for a start in museums or other arts - related employment and none (to my knowledge) had ties to the cooncil. I certainly did not. Apparently there was a huge mumber of applicants - over 1,000 IIRC - for the 20 odd jobs, only three were full time. The jobs had been advertised externally, so it might have been tough for them to justify giving the work to the offspring of cooncilor McPockle or cooncilor McFiddle.
One issue is that staff turnover in the council (at least in the area I worked in) was actually quite slow. The council tended to actually look after its staff, which was a good thing in some ways, eg when the cleaning in the museums was put out for mandatory competitive tendering, rather than sacking all the cleaning staff they were retrained as "museum assistants" and the museum assistant job expanded to include cleaning duties. However, this also meant that there were staff with serious drink problems or basis literacy/numeracy issues who they could not shift.
