This happened last year, but I just found out about some new developments that made me want to smash my head into a wall. I'm trying to keep this vague because unfortunately I still work for the organisation, just not that regional team.
About 20 or so of us were hired during the pandemic to work for this particular region of a government organisation as a kind of emergency measure, on fixed term contracts. When I was hired, I was told it would be highly likely the contracts would be extended, but I didn't fully believe them at the time (which unfortunately would turn out to be wise)
Only a couple months in, there's a huge drama with contracts as they decide to cut them early, then are told it's against government policy to do so without a huge notice period, so they basically have to give us until the end of the contracts anyway. We're assured that there will be plenty of permanent job postings available to apply for.
Well, it's about a month until the end of contracts, and this region hasn't put out their job postings. Other regions have, and many of my colleagues (and myself) have applied and gotten interviews. The region we work for has to hastily extend our contracts because they still haven't sorted out the permanent roles.
Me and a couple of my colleagues didn't get the positions in the other regions, so we hung on until our region FINALLY posts their jobs. There's about 10 of us left, and 5 roles, so we know some of us are gonna be disappointed. None of us were quite prepared for HOW disappointed we'd be.
Only 2 people who currently worked there were invited to interviews. Nothing in the job desyhad changed from when the rest of us were hired. We still fit all the criteria, PLUS we has 1-2 years experience in that region by this point.
Maybe there were other more qualified applicants? NOPE! They interviewed a grand total of THREE people for FIVE jobs. When they had 8 more people who fit the criteria currently working for them.
They hired 1 person from that round, meaning 4 jobs had to go back to adverts. They asked us to reapply. None of us did. End of contracts arrived, and 9 people left, never to look back.
Fast forward to last week when one of my former colleagues from that region joined the national team with me. She was friends with the one person who kept their job, and boy did she have some gossip. It's been almost 6 months since that drama, and not only have they not filled those 4 roles, they had to coerce someone out of retirement because they couldn't cope. She'd literally retired a month before we left, and they had to drag her back. Apparently she's miserable too.
I'm just…baffled. None of us can find any justification for this whole debacle. The criteria were the EXACT same as the ones we were hired under, AND the same as the other regions' job listings where most of us got interviews. I was told working for the government was supposed to be BETTER than the private sector, but I'm just over it all now