To think this was unfair, and to take time off for mental health.

[Dawnchorus1]

I work in the civil service, and after returning from mat leave was given the choice of returning to my current job full time or taking a demotion if I wanted to do 3 or 4 days.

I took the demotion. This was nearly 5 years ago. I've contributed fully and enthusiastically in my role and been successful in working on big projects and having my ideas taken forward consistently (we work in an environment where most projects have a few people creating initial ideas which the clients then chose from). This despite being managed by 'replacement', being a single parent to my son, having little family support and having lost my mum suddenly last year, and have been working very hard at keeping my shit together.

We've gone through a restructure recently which has been horrendous for most involved and taken it's toll (multiple applications to apply for our own jobs etc). I kept my job luckily. Then a position opened up for my previous role. My son being at school now I thought it would be a good time to get my career back on track - up my hours and resume previous role.

So put in application. Got interview. Knew others were going for it, but being the one who had actually done the job before thought I had more than a good chance of getting it.

Invites for interview were sent out on the Friday - which is non working day for me so I didn't see it until the Monday morning, meaning I Iost a weekend of prep time. Interviews scheduled for the following Monday, so only a week's notice for me. We had to prepare a presentation for the interview (with no time scheduled during work to do so). This also happened to be the week of my mum's 1 year anniversary of her sudden death, and the week in which we buried her ashes. I see a therapist and the week before this she said she thought I was depressed - because I said I was struggling to get out of bed and do basic things like the washing up and laundry.

I worked hard to prepare a presentation. Long story short I didn't get the job - despite being told I had done a really good presentation. Because I 'didn't have enough examples on the behaviour and strength questions'. Despite having worked with these people closely for 5-10 years. They know I can solve a problem, they've seen me do it every week. Yes I could have had better answers. But last week was the worst week for me to have to prepare for this. I put the time and effort I had in me getting my presentation in good shape.

I'm absolutely devastated. I feel like crap and need advice about what to do next. Think I'll need to take some time off for mental health reasons, how do I go about this? I feel so angry. I'm not sure if they were allowed to do what they did with demoting me when returning from mat leave.

Could you never just accept that the successful candidate did better than you at interview. There wasn’t a conspiracy or a favourite. Just that they’d prepared well and came across better on the day?

Huh? I totally accept that. They obviously did.

That doesn't mean I can't also think certain people on the panel were happy with the outcome.

Well, I don’t think you’re saving them money. It’s transactional- they pay you for hours worked. Full timers are paid more because they work more. You don’t know what goes on when you’re not there.

Hopefully they provide minutes to the meeting. FWIW I wouldn’t expect successful candidate announcements to be delayed because I was not in work. I don’t really think it’s rude tbh.

As a civil servant it doesn’t sound right that you weren’t allowed to stay at your own grade and drop a day; even if you had to change role.

YABU about the interview though, they’re never based on “someone who has already done the job” or “who you know not what you know” in the CS, it’s a clean slate for everyone, rightly or wrongly.

OP I do sympathise, it is tough to get knocked back and you have a lot going on to manage.

By all means speak to the union but I can’t see what they can do. The demotion question is really a matter of whether they should have accepted your flexible working request or not and that is long since timed out for any claim. On the selection process it sounds like they followed the “correct” HR process, even though it may not holistically give the best result - but process in CS is everything. At best they may be able to help get your scoring so you can be forensic on where to improve.

It is pretty standard to be feel annoyed and embarrassed when you don’t get a promotion when you feel you are the best candidate. Been there, done that, got the T shirt. But people look at how you respond. Don’t let your pain show, Lick your wounds in private and make a plan as to how you can move forward inside or outside the organisation. If just 4 days until Easter leave I would got your teeth and get through it if you can.

On the timing of announcements yeah not great but there may be other things at play that have made this appproach the least worst scenario rather than mere thoughtlessness towards you.

Not saying they should have delayed the successful candidate announcement.

But they didn't also have to announce who our new line managers would be, who would be in which team.

We were all in on Wednesday, they could have announced it all then anyway.

It might be different where you work, but where I am, most days will be someone’s NWD (between part time and compressed hours), or someone will be on AL or off sick or whatever. So management have to just carry on, have meetings recorded in one form or another, and expect those who aren’t there every day to catch up.

Otherwise nothing would get done!

Yeh it's not really like that in general. Anyway I have / had quite a close relationship with my line manager and I know it's not like her to not tell me the day before what my new team / line manager would be and who got it, if she new it would be announced the next morning on my NWD. There's only a few if us, it's not some huge department.

I think your attitude and responses on this thread really highlight why you weren’t the right fit for the role. As others have pointed out, the running of the company doesn’t start and end with your work pattern. You’re fixated on ‘costing less’- well yes, you’ll be 0.6 FTE but filling the 0.4 demand isn’t easy. You still require the same amount of management resource for 121s reviews QA etc. and same payroll costs as a FTE. As a manager I’d much rather have 6 FTEs than 10 x 0.6 FTEs.

You hate the company, your experience is historic, you didn’t prepare for interview properly despite having interviewer experience, didn’t check emails when off knowing you’d applied, you show very little awareness of management responsibilities and business oversight and you’ve reacted very immaturely to not getting the job. I would be asking for opportunities to learn and shadow when you get your feedback.

My experience isn't historic. I do the job now. I haven't line managed anyone for a while - but neither has the person they've given it to (or ever I think) so that doesn't really come into it.

I didn't prepare for the interview questions well enough. That was dumb / careless / potentially self sabotage because I don't want to up my hours really. I've never said the person who got it didn't deserve it, based on interview performance in this instance.

I do hate a lot of elements of the company this is correct, especially current management. But I am passionate about the work we do and do like a lot of the other people there.

I'm upset about not getting it, it's a knock back and humiliation on top of lots of other things going on for me at the mo. I'm a human being and I think this reaction is perfectly fine and not childish. I've not done anything stupid or been rude to anyone. I sent a very professional email to my manager requesting a feedback meeting next week so I can learn from the experience and build on my interview skills.

I've had some very good replies on this thread being emphatic and it's great to know others relate to how I've been feeling.

I'm going to stop posting now because I feel like I've processed it to a degree and need to just focus on the future now and looking after my son and my metal and physical health. Thanks all.

You’re still not ‘getting it’ about the interview: the ‘behaviours’ stuff is just how it’s done, the most important part of the interview in the format you had, and you didn’t prep for it nor do welp .

We can of course have opinions about the system, but it’s transparent how it’s done.

Managers weren’t U to announce who got the job in the way they did. It’s routine to announce these things whenever and however, with the exception of things like a team member being seriously ill or dying.

Union won’t be able to help with things that happened five years ago. I don’t understand what you’re hoping they will help you with.

That said, if your current manager has recently been making remarks like that about your part time working pattern that’s not OK and if they do it again would bring it up with them or their manager.

It sounds like you’re in a specific kind of role and team: in your situation though with being fed up and stuck for a long time I’d also consider applying for other kinds of SEO roles in your location - or indeed HEO if an interesting one comes up.

Op these things often happen for a reason. Draw a line under this and move on. Good luck

Surely they should all be happy they positioned the right person? It feels like you want them to feel unhappy they didn’t get you.

i would think carefully about the feedback meeting and if you should do that next week or delay until you feel better.

the feedback will have negative elements, and you may want to dispute them, or try to position yourself as unfairly treated or better than the person allocated the role which may cause you to spiral.

It would be very difficult for this to be a positive meeting, because I’m not sure you do want feedback to improve in future, I think you want justification why you didn’t get it and to argue the point about why the job should have been yours.

im really not sure if will help you at this point in time, I don’t think it will play out the way you want it to, and I don’t think you will get any reassurance they secretly wanted you.

I wonder if the post-maternity leave downgrading to HEO was properly handled, apart from the previously mentioned should it have happened at all. Did they actually take away duties from the SEO role? Was it clear what was HEO and what was SEO.? The organisation must have benefited from your prior experience and it is an unusual manager that will actively tell you not to go beyond the bounds of the grade. And if course some stretch is expected in order to achieve promotion. No wonder you feel resentment.

You are still quite dismissive about line management responsibilities. Even if it is only 2 staff it comes with a raft of policies and procedures to be on top of as well as day to day staffing issues. It is one differentiator between the grades, there will be others. Well, there should be.

Because when I was doing the role I had 6 to line manage, multiple management, allocation and scoping meetings etc. They are scaling that right back. It's essentially a different (less responsibility etc) role but the same name.

Honestly the place has gotten ridiculous. There's hardly any work to go around so it's a bit of a land grab and people squabbling over who does what.

Yes you're right usually a manager would see a capable employee as a godsend - someone to rely on. But here people are having to justify their jobs, I actually got told that I wasn't allowed to give the animator feedback on an animation he had done (which I'd designed the brand and storyboard for), because my manager was supposed to be over seeing it, and in her words 'if you oversaw it what would I do'

Honestly this isn't my reason for the meeting and I'm planning to make that clear in the beginning. I didn't have good enough examples. I can see that. I'd like to make sure I get the next job I go for (or give it my best shot!) so the least that can come out of all this stress is some learning and development.

Yes I take your point it might be a bit painful. I'll see how I'm getting on next week and can delay if necessary.

Not sure how many times I need to say this - I'm not bothered they announced who got the role. That's not really anything to do with me. I'm annoyed that they announced the teams, me and colleagues have new line managers. Also it was like a kick off meeting for the new start after months and months of restructure crap. There's only about 10 of us in the design team. Just seems like a bizarre way of starting this 'fresh start'.

Also the boss of our team has made comments to me before like 'well you only work 3 days, but I might give you 5 days work and you'll just have to do it's' - this had me in tears I'm a single parent and physically wouldn't be able to do that.

So in that context I can imagine that person actively putting it in for a Thurs with either absolutely no regard for whether that was inclusive for me and my PT colleague, or even doing it on purpose like well if they are really serious about this they'll join on their NWD. Yep the guy is a total piece of work. He would do that.

If those comments from your manager were recent you could have grounds for complaint, but in reality that won’t help you in your current situation or to move.

In your situation I’d be seeking a new job.

Your work area sounds ‘niche’: are you in a geographical location with other opportunities?

It might not be discrimination in law but can't you see that it's not likely to get the best person for the job ? Since interviewers are pretty much instructed to ignore the experience of a person who might actually already be doing that exact job potentially in favour of one who has done something vaguely like it once? .

Because that means you always give the advantage to the internal candidate and you don’t look at skills. What’s even th4 point of advertising and interviewing; and they may well think they have the right person.

But OP hasn’t done this job for 5 years. She’s the only one who says she’s the best person for the job - the person who got it must have demonstrated that they are the best person.

OP is just bitter

That's assuming that judging someone solely on a 45 min interview is the best way to find the right person for the job. It's a blunt tool, and especially in the CS if you get good at ticking the boxes and saying key words you will be put ahead of others. This was only advertised internally with no applicants outside of our direct team, so having a level playing field in that regard was already a given.

Anyway it's been a good learning experience, I now know the name of the game and if I go for another promotion I'll be ticking all the boxes, chatgpt ing all my prep, feeding in the job ad, personal statement and competency framework into it and having all the examples in front of me in the interview (which is almost definitely going to be online) and leaving my passion at the door because it doesn't count, doesn't give any points or tick any boxes.

It's a question of how specialised the work is. A HR informed idea of skills isn't necessarily adequate for gauging whether someone can do or manage a job.

HR don’t interview though - line managers do