pages tagged injeranoteshttp://christophe.rhodes.io/notes/tag/injera/notesikiwiki2015-02-06T11:35:05Zfdm group assessment day visithttp://christophe.rhodes.io/notes/blog/posts/2015/fdm_group_assessment_day_visit/2015-02-06T11:35:05Z2015-02-06T11:35:05Z
<p>It is (or “was”, by the time this gets published) the second week of
term, and that means it’s the time that we have available to help our
third-years find a path to their future, and help them take their
first steps on it. The work on their final projects (which is the
only thing timetabled to occupy most of them) will give them a chance
to explore their own capabilities and aptitudes, and to develop
something that they can use for later demonstration and reflection.</p>
<p>When I try to explain to people why I have the glamorous departmental
rôle of “employability coordinator”, I sometimes explain that I am the
last person in the department to have had an actual job
(ha-ha-only-serious). Of course this isn’t really true, but part of
the point of doing the <a href="http://www.teclo.net/">Teclo</a> adventure was to
learn about how the Real World works – or at least that bit of the
real world that is a technology and infrastructure startup based in
Mudeford and Zürich. (I missed the Kuala Lumpur and Hövenaset
stages).</p>
<p>So although I can speak with some credibility about the world of
small, bootstrapped companies, working among a team of frieds, it is
fair to say that my experience with more traditional, large employers
is limited. So when I had the good fortune to be invited to visit an
assessment day held by <a href="http://www.fdmgroup.com">FDM Group</a>, a large
IT consultancy firm, I saw an opportunity to learn more – and it did
indeed turn out to be an educational morning.</p>
<p>After an introduction to the office, including coffee on a sofa with a
pretty spectacular view over the Thames, we were taken in to the
candidates’ initial briefing session, where they were made to
introduce themselves (what degree they did, how they heard of FDM
Group, when they could start, and something exciting about them) and
given an introduction to the training programme that they were
applying for (along with a couple of cheesy corporate videos). The
terms of the training – a 12-week course, testing every week, and
subsequent two-year employment term with the clock starting at the
first consultancy placement, were presented up front; it’s perhaps
worth noting that in the candidates’ introductions, they uniformly
said that they could start work as soon as possible...</p>
<p>Then there were the interviews. The format was, for the students,
three interviews of five minutes each, with four questions in each:
loosely themed around their studies; their technical background; and
their general outlook. If five minutes seems on the short side, it
might be explained by the use of the “strength-based” interview
paradigm – as opposed to the more traditional “competence-based”: the
interviewers were less interested in the detail of a (prepared) answer
to a specific question (<em>e.g.</em> “give me an example of when you were
able to resolve conflict?”), than in the reaction of candidates to
slightly less predictable questions (<em>e.g.</em> “were there any modules in
your studies you didn’t like?” and “if you were given a surprise
afternoon off from work, what would you do?”). I also got to observe
the “wash-up”, where on the strength of the interviews the candidates
were rated as pass, fail or marginal; from my observation, at least,
it did not look like the interviews were used as traps: certainly, I
didn’t strongly disagree with any of the judgments, and I thought the
candidates were treated fairly.</p>
<p>After the interviews, the candidates were required to take three
aptitude tests: mental arithmetic (fairly basic, but under a certain
amount of time pressure); general (technical) knowledge and logic; and
Venn diagrams and set notation. The first had some questions that
were simple in all circumstances, and some that I wouldn’t have been
pleased not to have pen and paper for – but a passing mark of 50%
<em>should</em> be no problem for any technical graduate. The second was
multiple-choice, and had some questions reminiscent of IQ tests, some
probing knowledge of facts related to computing in general, and one or
two towards the end that looked quite fearsome tests of logic and
reasoning. The third was interesting – not so much for the material,
which again did not look like it went beyond GCSE maths, but because
of the approach: most of the candidates will not have thought about
set notation for at least half a decade; however, the assessors
provide a handbook giving all the information needed to solve the
(basic) problems. Is this just a test of being able to Read The Fine
Manual? Maybe not; the fact that the subsequent training includes a
compulsory section on SQL suggests that there’s value in being able to
reason about sets.</p>
<p>So, after all this, the successful candidates have earnt the right to
study (unpaid, but at no direct cost) for twelve weeks, then will earn
a wage of £18k plus £14.60/day for the first year, £18k plus
£29.21/day for the second year, with conditions: the payments start
when the trainees are first placed as consultants; there are no
guarantees as to geographic location within the UK; and they must
remain as FDM consultants for at least two years or repay the costs of
their training; the staff on hand at the assessment day were up-front
about the fact that a majority of their recruits go on to work as
employees of their placements, and that the average time spent as an
employee of FDM was around three years.</p>
<p>The FDM business model, then, looks like providing enough training to
raw recruits to be plausibly useful, and taking a consultancy fee from
other institutions for somewhat de-risking the recruitment process.
The recruits get real-world experience and a foot in the door, as well
as training (is 16 weeks of full-time training meaningful?) and a
livable salary.</p>
<p>However. There’s something that sticks in the craw a bit. I
understand that training costs money, and I understand that businesses
have to profit. But there’s something a bit depressing about an IT
consultancy that essentially states that graduates are not
sufficiently skilled to be productive, but explicitly require further
technical training: and that <em>also</em> requires those graduates to take
that training without pay. I have spent a certain amount of time
convincing myself that a comparison to indentured servitude is not
fair; a two-year training programme is not uncommon, and although
graduate trainee schemes don’t often publish their detailed terms and
conditions I can imagine that there might well be little job security
during the training period, and even clauses about recouping training
fees in the event of resignation or dismissal for cause. But the lack
of pay for the training period feels wrong to me; I can’t help but
feel that this is a further barrier against those without the means to
support themselves, and it is also unfair: even if you’re not being
directly productive to the business, you’ve made a commitment and the
business is requiring you to do certain tasks.</p>
<p>But FDM Group is not the only company to structure its graduate
programme in this way; I've also seen this at
<a href="http://www.capita-itps.co.uk/careers/the-novus-programme/">Capita</a>,
and it might well be common in the outsourcing/consultancy business
(though
<a href="http://uk.atos.net/en-uk/home/careers/graduates/our-graduate-programme.html">Atos</a>
apparently doesn’t follow this model, and Sion Elias from
<a href="http://www.iggroup.com/">IG Group</a> (in the presentation in week four)
explicitly said that their graduate trainees have permanent paid
contracts from their first day). I also have to acknowledge that
those I met at FDM group, and the consultant who came to visit our
third-year undergraduates a week later, were positive about their
experience; maybe these large outsourcing companies do meet a need,
finding those not able to market their skills directly and providing
them with the environment they need to flourish. In any case, I am
pleased to have been offered opportunity to see inside the recruitment
process; I think it’s given me some insight to both sides of the
interview table.</p>
<p>And then after all that, I went off to Borough Market, and had a
delicious lunch box from
<a href="http://boroughmarket.org.uk/ethiopian-flavours">Ethiopean Flavours</a>
(mmm, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Injera">injera</a>) for lunch on my
way back to College.</p>