Son's awful experience in first week of job

[ArmyofMunn]

Sorry this is long but I wanted to get it all down!

My 18DS started his first full time job last week. He has A Levels but is not degree educated and was taken on as one of four, the other three being in their mid-to late twenties and two of them with degrees. It was with a financial services company and paid £4K more per year plus commission than another job he’d also been offered, so he was very pleased.

He spent last week and the first two days of this week completing training for the job and he's been coming home each day saying how much he loves it - the training, the people, the office, the role etc. The training has been intense, involving two powerpoint presentations per day to prove he understood the training, but in which he said he kept coming second from top.

This week, following the training, he’s had to do three mock calls to a fake customer (his line manager) and he apparently made three ‘breaches’ in total, all involving not noticing that the customer had used some wrong letters during the security checks of emails and addresses etc. He thought he’d done well though as he was confident and affable and just thought next time he’d get the breaches right. He was shocked therefore to be taken into a room after his final call by two managers and told that because of the breaches he hasn’t passed his probation week and would have to leave and couldn’t appeal!

He’s completely shocked. The company didn’t tell him that his first week was probationary and he also remembers reading clearly that breaches by employees in their first month should not be regarded as breaches. He unfortunately read this on their own system so he can’t access it now, and his employer has his contract, so he can’t check that over either.

I just think this is an absolutely terrible way to treat an employee and my son is struggling to understand how the breaches he made were so serious as to warrant being asked to leave. He did ask to opt out of their employee life insurance and pension scheme, so I’m wondering if that just didn’t go down well with them!

Does anyone on here have experience of this type of thing? Are companies allowed to treat people like this these days?

Maybe he is over confident about his abilities or hadn't picked up on what his employer actually expected from him. Whether it was the mistakes themselves or something else that they can't actually say, legally speaking, it seems they didn't want him.

He needs to chalk it up to experience. No harm done, he just needs to get out there and find something else. And try harder to be the employee the next organisation is looking for.

I completely agree with you. I just think all the stuff about how “entitled” he and OP are is unpleasant. I think most of us would feel upset in this scenario, particularly if we thought our contract might be being breached. Presumably he didn’t realise how serious these mistakes were- he was still in training and they weren’t real clients.

I actually worked in a financial services call centre and remember the training well. I spent several days listening in on calls and that is where the procedures became hard wired. I had assessments that needed to be passed before I was let loose on the phones, and these were similar to this case, i.e. a mock call with a manager. I can assure you that these were terrifying, and absolutely everyone made mistakes, ranging from DPA breeches right through to stuttering and all sorts. But we spent several days practising these in our group. I'm sure we couldn't have gotten away with failing these indefinitely, but there was never any threat of the sack for failing. The trainers would anticipate someone struggling and pay them extra attention. If they were trying out for special forces I could understand this brutal approach, but for a call centre in financial services they are potentially losing great employees due to a lack of patience and attention to those who are inexperienced in life and need a little leg up.

Sorry, but as a bank customer, I would want someone sacked for consistently not noticing that the person trying to access my account had failed the security questions.

Do you want everyone to pay with their livelihood with any mistake they made?

DPA is very important, but a new started is bombarded with new information that they need to nail. I can tell you from experience that getting on the phones when you're a wet behind the ears 18 year old is bloody terrifying.

A week in training in a casual sounding atmosphere followed by a formal assessment in a role play with someone who fancies themselves as Claude from the Apprentice isn't giving the lad a fair crack of the whip.

Would it have killed the company to give him a few more days' worth of call listening and practice before reassessing him? If after a PIP and review meetings he's still crap, then maybe it is time to let him go.

I do feel.for your son as he is young and that must be a massive knock to his confidence

@Everanewbie I agree with you that he could have been given more chances in training period. The employer could have invested more time in him.

My experience is working in compliance from the other side. My team does not do telephone calls but a high level of accuracy and attention to detail is required.

Some people get there with more training, sadly others just can't or won't. It is the wrong job for them and actually kinder for them to find something else because it is soul destroying to have your work picked apart constantly. As an employer, at what point do you cut losses. Obviously the more candidates there are out there (and an entry level position will generally have more), the less tolerance the employer has before they go 'next'.

not noticing that the customer had used some wrong letters during the security checks

@MavisChunch29

surely he's be relying on a computer system to tell him whether the letters/numbers were correct

It sounds as if the id documentation presented was faked and he didn't spot it. Three times, in three case studies. That is 100% failure rate. One security checks. In FS

He appears to have made the same or a similar mistake three times inspire of being given feedback on the first two times.

That isn't draconian, it is evidence of someone who does not learn from their mistakes and/or is not a detail oriented person.

He doesn't sound suited for this type of work. Maybe a lucky escape. It's much more fun to work somewhere where your gifts fit with the culture.

If he is confident and affable, he will be much happier in a role where the top requirement is not accuracy.

Good luck.

@blueshoes I agree. Eventually that conclusion might be reached. But not after a week with a kid straight out of school.

I am sure he is gutted to be let go and feeling very sorry for himself, which is understandable.

Once he has dusted himself down, the best thing he can do is learn from the experience. He seems not to have grasped the training as well as he thought. I take that from his belief that he "just thought next time he’d get the breaches right". It doesn't work that way for financial security. He was given feedback that he did not take on board time after time so that is a lesson for him to learn, listen and incorporate that feedback into how he next carries out that particular task.

I wonder if "confident and affable" read in real life as "arrogant and slap-dash"?

Absolutely the company have behaved badly if this story is 100% "how it was". But maybe this error on the phone calls was just the last thing they needed to realise that your son and them wasn't going to be a good fit? A naive, "first job" 18 year old isn't necessarily going to be that clued into the dynamics of the workplace.

Personally, I'd encourage a "shrug and move on mentality" for your son. If he made rookie "18 year old first job" errors, he'll realise them himself in years to come.

To be honest it sounds like he needs the knock in his confidence because this was all hubris.

He thought he's "done well" and was "affable" when he made three consecutive security errors and didn't recognise how vital that is. He will never pay attention to the fine details as long as his attitude is "get it right eventually."

A bit less cocky and a bit more diligent will serve him well in the next job. I hoipe he finds something that suits him better and can learn from this first experience. Good luck!

Is it a "reputable" company? Or some fly by night cold calling thingy?

But the OP's son didn't, he was in training.

It sounds like they do, or think they do, have the pick of candidates, and have a hire and fire mentality. Sounds like he is better off out of it. Hopefully he'll find something else and put this behind him, he shouldn't let it affect his confidence.

And by the way, attention to detail absolutely can be learnt!

I don’t blame them for delaying it. If I could go back in time I’d delay it too by going to uni, then some travelling, then an MA, then some travelling etc etc. Unless you’re lucky and work at something you love, it sucks.

It sounds like he did what a lot of young people do (and I did myself when younger) and focussed on the things he felt were most important, like being confident, rather than on what the company felt was most important. 3 times of getting a security detail wrong is massive IMO, and would open the company for masses of liability. I am guessing he will not make that kind of mistake again, but a hard lesson to learn.

ive trained people who say they "get something" but clearly don't. it's frustrating and a waste of everyone's time. its not just young people but more likely to be.

you need to not molly coddle your son op. i'm sorry he had to get a shock to such a degree but he needed a head wobble.
dont forget theres two sides to every story

He should definitely have kept a copy of his contract. Lesson learnt on that front.

After a week of intensive training he has failed all 3 assessments so I'm not surprised he's been let go. He really needs to get hold of a copy of his contract to see if he has been unfairly treated or not.

Onwards and upwards, he just needs to be more organised next time round and know what he's signing up to.

But he wasn't getting it after 3 attempts. Some people just aren't cut out for it.

He'll be suited to something else though - maybe sales

Of course, there's another slant on this. Supposing this had been a mediocre job with so-so pay. The sort of temping job arranged thru a local agency. Would he be so gutted or outraged about having been given the push for similar reasons? Maybe, but it's partly because he thought he'd made it and was at the races, only to have it snatched away.

Some have been ratty about a company trusting a slipshod 18 year old with security details but then again, is that the sort of job you entrust with someone straight out of school in their first job? I don't know, isn't this a data entry job of sorts anyway? I was once booked as a freelance and messed up big time on the first day, all very severe, someone had to be called out in the middle of the night to put it straight while I slept through it.... all very well but only later did I come to and realise - you don't normally give a job that important to the new boy on his first day of a two-week temping stint do you? You'd think the person overseeing me would double check before leaving for the day, right? I doubt the finger of blame ever got pointed at her, however.

I'm not saying it's exactly the same but there are different aspects at work here, it's like everyone's got a story on a thread on Mumsnet about how they messed up in their first job, it's the context here that changes things.

It is just an experience; not the best for first job but he is young; try to forget about it and move on; hopefully to a better company. It is just a job.

What doesn't square up though is that he read that any mistake made by an employee in their first three months there can't be classed as a breach, as they're training, so why was he penalised in his first week for this?

A (single) mistake in the first month - but not three in a week. I think he and you are relying too much on the letter of the statement and not enough on the principle. If he made the same or similar type of error three times despite having them pointed out that says he can't be bothered to do the job properly. One mistake that you learn from can be expected. Three when you've been told is just couldn't care less.

I think that is a good idea @ArmyofMunn .

One other thing I would make a possible suggestion about is that I would strongly suspect that somewhere, either written down on the Companies systems or verbally, or in the initial job offer, was the information that a certain period of his employment would be on probation. He either failed to hear this, or take it onboard when he read it, (possibly because he was overconfident that he wouldn't fail his Probation and it didn't actually register with him?) and this would tie in exactly with his subsequent failing to demonstrate that he finds it difficult to pay attention to every small detail. He was told Once and did it again. He got another chance - and failed to notice again, in spite of being told after the first time - and they gave him yet ANOTHER chance and he still didn't notice.

Obviously his skills did not meet the skills for the particular job and they wouldn't have been able to keep him on, given the nature of the job. Taking this further would be absolutely pointless in my view. Sorry for him, but a steep learning curve which will help him in the future, I would hope

Shocking in what way?if someone can't correctly identify the characters in a password they may not be suited to the job

That's common sense not a lack of training