An interesting new article on the “job blocking” effect in UK museums and the arts.
How it happens: A relatively mundane arts/heritage job attracts an overqualified person to do it, due to a small number of sector vacancies and vast oversupply of graduates. But the overqualified person soon announces they are leaving for a better job. Managers/HR then casually assume that the new job description should match or exceed the ultra-high qualifications of the previous employee. They write a job description requiring deep layers of multiple high-level competencies, several years in a similar post, and probably also a PhD. Then they wonder why they don’t attract a diverse range of applicants.
The answer? If you have New Year vacancies due to job-hopping, simply strip back to the actual booked work being done and ensure that the new…
“job description design only includes criteria to meet the essential and explicit job requirements.”
One is also likely, in such a case, to find individuals with the sort of sophisticated “home-brewed” digital-tech skills that arts-degree candidates would likely lack.
