Nice People Thread No. 15, a Cyber Summer

Pyxis

Many, many moons ago, I went by train 200 miles away, staying overnight in a hotel, to attend an interview first thing in the morning. I was assured I would get my expenses reimbursed.


Well, it turned out that they did offer me the job, but on reflection I decided it wasn't for me.

Then they told me that I wouldn't get my expenses reimbursed because I had been offered the job!

I wasn't very amused, as I was only on a modest salary!

PasturesNew

I must be going soft. Weather site says it's 7C outside but my fingers are frozen so I've turned the heating on.

ukmaggie45

Hi Pastures, just noticed email from FindMyPast saying free access till 15th Jan. Sorry missed a few days - not been online much the last few days so only just saw it.

Think I may have mucked up my FT trying to add in the census stuff.

zagubov

Pyxis wrote: »

Many, many moons ago, I went by train 200 miles away, staying overnight in a hotel, to attend an interview first thing in the morning. I was assured I would get my expenses reimbursed.


Well, it turned out that they did offer me the job, but on reflection I decided it wasn't for me.

Then they told me that I wouldn't get my expenses reimbursed because I had been offered the job!

I wasn't very amused, as I was only on a modest salary!

Could be worse. Back in the early 80s, I travelled 300 miles for an interview for a (poorly-paid) PhD post, was given the tour and the interview and sent home. Would have loved the post, but didn't get it, but found out later that the post was created for an internal candidate who was given it after what was really a sham interview procedure.

No travel expenses for applicants. Complete waste of time and money to give a fig leaf of legitimacy for an internal appointment.

Pyxis

Yes, that's really mean, Zagubov.

Most unethical IMO.

Yorkie1

Doozergirl wrote: »

Indeed. Many things involve consulting google these days. I'm sure we don't even retain a lot of stuff that we used to, simply because we have the info in the big database in our pockets.

chris_m wrote: »

if there was something I needed to find out to solve and issue Google was my friend and that no training course could give me more than an insight into something, never mind the detail I required and could usually find in 5 minutes or so - and that a course wouldn't give me the info I needed at the time I needed it.

This is an ongoing dilemma in my field of work as I create training. Do we provide something now, so that people have I in case they need it (and can then refer back to the course notes), or do we provide something at the point of need? Ideally, the latter, but when the latter requires classroom training on practical application of skills, you need sufficient people needing the training at the same time in order for a course to be worth running. E-learning only goes so far, and reading of information doesn't go far enough in the practical application of the theory.


Add into that the ('political') requirement by those at the top of the organisation to be assured that everyone has been trained (irrespective of need), then you end up with lowest common denominator sheep dip despite your best intentions.

Pyxis wrote: »

Yes, that's really mean, Zagubov.

Most unethical IMO.

Beat me to it. Wholly wrong.

chris_m

Yorkie1 wrote: »

Originally Posted by chris_m
if there was something I needed to find out to solve and issue Google was my friend and that no training course could give me more than an insight into something, never mind the detail I required and could usually find in 5 minutes or so - and that a course wouldn't give me the info I needed at the time I needed it.

This is an ongoing dilemma in my field of work as I create training. Do we provide something now, so that people have I in case they need it (and can then refer back to the course notes), or do we provide something at the point of need? Ideally, the latter, but when the latter requires classroom training on practical application of skills, you need sufficient people needing the training at the same time in order for a course to be worth running. E-learning only goes so far, and reading of information doesn't go far enough in the practical application of the theory.

I agree, it's not easy to achieve the right balance. In my case, what I needed to know was immediate and couldn't really have been predicted in a training course - unless that course lasted for months or, even, years and even then there would be no certainty that it would cover absolutely everything.

For example, one "little" bugbear we had for a while was when I was manipulating Excel workbooks using VBA and it was persistently altering the date format, despite me double and triple checking both my system settings and my Excel settings. A colleague observed that if they did the manipulation manually the dates remained correct. After quite a lot of Googling I finally found out that VBA only understands Yank date formats and that was why it was altering the format. Once I'd discovered that it was a doddle to rework it to overcome the issue. Try anticipating something as obscure as that for a training course - there are so many thing you can do in Excel, and usually half a dozen different ways of doing the same thing. All that is really practical, IMO, is to provide a reasonable grounding and the URL for Microsoft and Google

E-learning isn't always the right thing either - I don't know if it's because my company employed useless E-learning designers but I absolutely hated the things - I "learnt"basically s*d-all from them and considered them all a complete waste of my valuable time just to get the tick in the box.

PasturesNew

Yorkie1 wrote: »

....something now... in case they need it
...something at the point of need?

Best answer would be "on demand, online, one-to-one with facetime and remote control. "

Pricey though to set up and sit and wait "in case" somebody calls and then to match that to the skill to deliver .... at a price point people are willing to pay.



I worked "in training" on creating a blended learning solution in ~2001. Early days, low expectations - the brief was short and easily achievable because nobody was "connected" with all the smartphone stuff they are now.

We were just delivering a bit of "reminder/practice/drills" post-course back then, following classroom training.

My role was to research available platforms, then to project manage the content creation between trainers/materials and a Flash developer. Project was killed due to 9/11 as the main driver to doing it and paying for it was the company moving into the US market - and suddenly nobody wanted to fly anywhere, so I delivered the first half of the project, they killed off the second half (to do more of the same).

Yorkie1

PasturesNew wrote: »

Best answer would be "on demand, online, one-to-one with facetime and remote control.

Pricey though to set up and sit and wait "in case" somebody calls and then to match that to the skill to deliver .... at a price point people are willing to pay.

Absolutely; people do learn best when they are self-directed and can call upon expertise at the point of need.

SingleSue

I've actually got an ECDL (for all the good it does me), I think I would still probably need google to refresh my memory on mail merge.