RANT - Part 4: The Formal Rejection

*WARNING* The contents of this blog post may include profanity, anger and frustration. The opinions presented are solely mine and admittedly are somewhat biased. You are encouraged to come to your own conclusions.

And this is how the story ends:

An entry-level constable position finally opened with the Charlottetown Police Service. So my husband submitted his application in November 2013 and after two months of waiting, we received an official letter of rejection in the mail last week. The rejection letter was very surprising considering that he meets (or exceeds) all of the qualifications of the position as listed in the job advertisement yet he wasn't even considered for an interview.

As mentioned, I am pretty biased in my opinion that my husband is a qualified candidate for the position of entry-level police constable. He is after all, already a police constable. But I'm not the only person who thinks that he is a good candidate. First of all, he was hired by a police service in Ontario and since then has received two awards for policing excellence. So clearly, his current employers feel that he meets the standard. He graduated from police college near the top of his class, and has since continued his eduction by becoming a certified scenes of crime officer and breath technician. He is presently a member of the tactics and rescue unit and has five years of policing experience behind him. In addition, he has a university degree and second language training, as well as five years experience in the Canadian Forces (and was the recipient of a mention in dispatch for his actions while deployed to Afghanistan). I don't believe that it is a stretch to say that this is a solid candidate and a candidate who is worthy of an interview.

I'm not implying that Charlottetown Police should have hired my husband immediately without considering other candidates. In fact, I am sure that there are other strong candidates who also applied for the position. I also understand that the hiring committee may be suspicious of his intentions; they should ask questions like “Why is someone from an Ontario police service applying here?”, “What are his motivations for wanting to move to PEI?” and “Will the candidate stay for the long term?”.  I both understand and respect the need for this line of thinking and I think that these questions should be touched on in the interview to get a feel for the candidate's “personal suitability”. However, there was no interview, he was simply rejected and I still curious to learn the criteria by which this decision was made.

Even more frustrating is the fact that the service has an agreement with the union which states that a short list of up to 10 qualified candidates will be created from any open competition such as this. This short list will be valid for a period of 12 months following the competition and additional openings within that period will be filled with candidates from the list. We thought that such an agreement would work out to our advantage because although we weren't expecting to get an offer of employment for the first open position with the service, we did feel confident that if he was interviewed that he would make the short list. Considering there are a handful of current serving members who are scheduled to retire in 2014, we anticipated that he should qualify for at least one of the upcoming new-hires. However, because Charlottetown Police did not interview him for the current opening, he will not be making the short list for future employment opportunities. As such, any opportunities which may become available between now and March of 2015 will be closed to the public and candidate selection will come from the internal list. The result for us is that it may be another 24 months (or more) before a position opens to the public for which he would be eligible to apply. Considering we have already been living in different provinces for 13 months while waiting for this opportunity, the prospect of having to wait another 24 months before another opportunity presents itself is very daunting.

The official rejection letter which we received in the mail was on a CPS letter head and was signed by the chief and his deputies. In the letter it was noted that over 50 applicants applied for the position and that although my husband didn't make the cut for an interview, that they wished him the best of luck in his future endeavours (how nice). I had some difficulty accepting the rejection without even an interview, but I was really pissed off about the content of the letter itself. The secretary tasked with writing the rejection notice either did not know how to use Microsoft Office or simply didn't have enough interest to bother proofreading the document. The letter contained a number of spelling and grammatical errors. In my opinion, grammatical and spelling errors on an official document are unacceptable. 

In an attempt to ascertain the reasoning behind the decision to exclude a qualified candidate from the interview process, my husband has contacted CPS to follow up and request any feedback which they may be able to provide in the hopes of improving his application for future opportunities. He has yet to hear a response.

 

http://lauralaurapicturedrawer.blogspot.ca

With the inability to qualify for any future opportunities with CPS until March 2015 and the statement from SDP indicating that they only hire internally, it is now evident that our future will not be in Eastern Canada. We are simply unwilling to continue to be separated by 2000 km for another two (+) years. Our future will be in Ontario. Without the chance to live with my family, there is no reason for me to stay in PEI. I really believe that this entire situation is fucked. Yeah, I said it - this is fucked. I apparently live in a naive world where I believe people should be judged on their skills and qualifications. Since that would apparently does not exist, I will have to quit the job for which I have spent a decade in training. I will be quitting a job that I love, in a place that I love living. I will have to return to unemployment and fight the several hundreds of applicants who apply for a single open position in Southern Ontario. If I do manage to find employment in Ontario, I will likely have to commute long distances in horrifying traffic just to get there. Locally, Souris High School will lose a volunteer coach, Wrestling PEI will lose an officials development coordinator and my company will be burdened with trying to find a replacement. And sadly, I will be leaving behind a number of wonderful people who I have come to love spending time with during the past year. 

Interestingly, we are not the only couple facing employment challenges on the East coast. I just received a message from one of my friend who along with her husband, left Eastern Canada 8 years ago for job opportunities in Northern Alberta (as there were few opportunities in Eastern Canada at the time). Now that they have work experience under their belts and a young family, they are trying to relocate to Eastern Canada to be closer to their extended family. Less than 24 hours ago, her husband interviewed for a position in Nova Scotia. During the interview, the hiring committee told him that although the competition was advertised as "open" to applications from the public, that they only hire managers from within the organization. He was advised that they were obligated by labour laws to at least interview him as he met all of the minimum and asset qualification, but that they like to keep these managerial jobs for "in-house" applicants. As such, it was suggested to him that although his qualifications and experience were that of a manager, that if he was really interested in living in NS, that he should reapply as an entry level engineer (for significantly less salary). So apparently, we are not the only ones who are facing these challenges.