So who do you think got the job?

[MelaniasBlueDress]

It is a very niche, complex area of work, and one in which women are very much the minority (around 5% women).

Candidate A:

Female. Over 20 years relevant experience. Currently working on all of the issues and could hit the ground running. Has worked in the organisation before (in a different but related role) and has huge and relevant contact list from this time. Has a good reputation in this field. Seen by former colleagues in the organisation as a shoo in and very good news. Is bilingual in language that would be useful to have for this job, but not essential. Undergraduate degree, but not in subject relevant to the job.

Candidate B:

Male. No relevant experience at all in this field and no knowledge of the issues. Good track record in what he does, but there is no read across from that to this job at all. Has never worked in the organisation, but his wife works there. Agreement from colleagues that if he got the job it would be a really steep learning curve. PhD from Cambridge in irrelevant subject.

On paper yes you seem a better fit but if that was all it was about there wouldn't be a need for interviews at all would there? I'm sure it's disappointing OP but the interview will also take into account personality and who they think will be better as part of the team. It sounds like the other candidate performed better in the interview, that's not to say your previous experience wasn't taken into consideration, as PP said they would have used that to assess whether to give you an interview. It's possible they wanted somebody who can bring other industry experience to the company.

It is a tick box system because no-one is allowed to use their judgement any more.

So sorry OP - keep trying.

to me it reads like they had decided before hand to give the job to candidate B and Candidate A (or any other candidates) were only interviewed to pretend it was an open application.

It could be they wanted a man for the job, it could be they wanted this candidate for the job before even advertising this vacancy for others to apply for, and you were only interviewed so they could say they interviewed a woman.

Many a job has been given this way, I frankly prefer it when companies are just honest and don't bother advertising, rather than wasting other people's time.

It depends SO much what the job is. If it's doing something that requires an enormous degree of mechanical skill that can only be earned through decades of practice, then "experience" really means something. If it's using your brain or creativity, then experience is far less relevant because there are very few jobs indeed that are really that intellectually demanding that they can't be picked up within a few weeks by someone of reasonable intelligence.

Whenever I've been on recruitment panels I've looked for people with raw intelligence, self-starting capabilities and a bit of nous over experience of doing the same thing over and over again. I'd rather have a youngster with some get-up-and-go than someone more experienced but less flexible. (This speaks to the kind of workplace I am in as much as to my preferences).

All that said, I do think there is a very well-evidenced bias towards men in the workplace, and that discrimination against women is very, very real and needs to be tackled.

Is that even legal? I might phrase a question slightly different for different candidates but they are always fundementally the same.

Yeah, yeah Wigbert, you keep telling yourself your DH got the job because he is 'better', not because of inherent sexism in the work place

What an unnecessarily nasty (not to mention stupid) comment. How would you know anything about that situation?!?

You know what...[whispers]...sometimes a male candidate may actually be better than a female one . It's not always a conspiracy.

I don't think I would get anywhere if I tried to take it further. I have an interview for another position next week (different organisation and more money).

DontTouch - I am trying very hard not to say here that I'm sure another man would be a better fit in an all male team...!

And I doubt they asked us the same questions

Is that even legal?

I would hazard a guess at yes, because of the company I work for who are mutinational with thousands of employs and very by the book at the moment.

I occasionally have to interview (competency based) and we have eight competencies, of which there are 10 possible questions each. The question is pulled at random from each section...sometimes I groan for the poor bugger when they're unfortunate enough to get one of the harder ones.

his wife works there

There's your answer. Nepotism no doubt.

Yanbu.

You are clearly cross about this but I think you might be being unfair to B. You don't know enough about him to be so dismissive of him and, to be frank, are you always this dismissive of people and think you are better than them because that would be a concern to me if I were the one looking to promote you.

^ this could be a big factor.

Unless you know Candidate B very well, then your appraisal of him in your OP could be missing some of his experience.

I regularly interview candidates for roles and it is not always the person with the best CV and history that gets the role. How you come across in interview and how you interact with people is also vitally important. Often the person with transferable skills fits better because the new company may wish to train them up a bit to their method of working. It's a difficult and complex decision when hiring new staff. Claiming you weren't hired due to sexism may be a signal of your own entitlement and this may have come across in interview.

Yeah, yeah Wigbert, you keep telling yourself your DH got the job because he is 'better', not because of inherent sexism in the work place

Unless you know the person, you are being extremely nasty and unnecessarily vindictive.

Op I am a woman who has spent the best part of a decade working in manufacturing companies so I do sympathise as I understand what it is like to work in a make dominated industry and how much harder you have to work just to be taken seriously. Unfortunately in this case there are so many variables that it becomes very difficult to know for sure exactly why he was given the role over you. Only the people who sat in on both interviews would be able to say for sure. I'd put it behind you and focus on the other role, it sounds like a better opportunity anyway

If it was a competency based interview / questions then its doubtful that previous experience would've been taken into consideration, it would've been for the pre-selection stage though.

It'e likely that all your answers were scored (out of a number, or percentage) based on how thorough they were and how well you evidenced the question. The person with the highest score is the one that has to be offered the job.

I can't see the problem, apart from hurt pride of OP.

At the V&A Tristram Hunt was recently appointed Director. I'm sure there was a deputy there thinking the job was rightfully theirs. But an outsider was chosen.

At the dcs' school the headship was vacant. Two deputy heads applied and an outsider. Those in situ were not automatically considered better suited just because they were familiar with the school.

As others have said, jobs are not awarded solely on a paper application. That is what gets you through the door. Sometimes The Ideal Candidate walks in and it turns out they're not all that. Or, that someone else was just better.

I don't see how they can possibly claim that B is an "even stronger candidate" given that his CV is so much worse and he could not answer questions based on his experience in the relevant field. Did he even match the job description?

I would strongly suggest you take advice about sending them a list of questions with a view to an Equality Act claim. The burden of proof that they did not discriminate is on them, and it sounds like they would struggle quite severely.

You don't need union advice - for one thing, if B is a member of the same union there is an obvious conflict.

You need legal advice. Unfortunately one line of that advice will be the excessive fee to go to Tribunal. (I'm not saying that there should not be a fee, there should have been from the day the tribunals were invented, but it is too high).

You also need to consider how comfortable you would be afterwards even if you win. All the laws in the world can't stop people taking sides.

Good luck whatever you decide to do.

I don't see how they can possibly claim that B is an "even stronger candidate" given that his CV is so much worse and he could not answer questions based on his experience in the relevant field. Did he even match the job description?

Firstly no one here, including OP will have seen his CV, nor does anyone know what questions he did of didn't answer.

Aren't we talking about Trump here!?

Ugh, what an awful situation, OP. In my experience 'competency-based' interviews almost always favour the young, cheap, eager & malleable (regardless of sex) over the experienced, more expensive, confident and leaderly. You must be so pissed off.

Maybe they just like him more than you? It's essential whoever you hire will fit in well with the current workers. Experience doesn't automatically equal best candidate.

Coldsick

I can never understand the logic behind refusing to take into account previous experience. If someone has already demonstrated that they can do the job well, why would or should you ignore that?

This reminds me of a time an organisation I was had some associations with had to re-tender a contract they had had previously. They had consistently met every performance standard very well and had very high markings on peer review. They didn't get the contract because those awarding it refused to take into account past performance and apparently the written application didn't tick quite the right boxes. Three other organisations got the contract: two had no track record in the work area in question, the other did but had come very close to losing the contract previously through poor performance - none of that apparently counted against the ability to say the right things in the application.

Needless to say, one of the organisations gave up after a few weeks, and another had to have the contract terminated after some major fuck-ups. The people awarding the contracts had to go begging to the organisation I knew to rescue them.

But yes, I can see why you are upset, OP :(

Best of luck OP with the next interview. No disrespect to the other candidate but if you are gone shortly after his appointment, that will surely test his mettle, so to speak.
I worked in an organisation where I saw something similar-ish happen. The guy appointed had a long haul to get really up to speed for the job, and relied a lot on the female candidate who had carried out the role for a number of years, albeit minus the rank he got, and for a lower salary. And she did help and advise him, despite being disappointed at what had happened.
She went onto bigger and better things with another company not long afterwards though. Hope that happens for you too.