Online application screw-up
For the first time in a couple of years, my Department is about to offer training places and promotion boards for people of my grade. Given I've been waiting for 2 years, I shall try both routes. Only problem is...I can't complete the online process for the training places. :(
I know I didn't try last weekend, because I got distracted doing something else. There's only a three week window, but I thought I'd have plenty of time if I did it on Wednesday night. After all - it's not due in until midday next Thursday, so I've got a whole week, right?
Wrong.
For one thing, my boss's boss rang Thursday afternoon to ask me to facilitate the two day conference our business unit has lined up for Tuesday and Wednesday next week. Now I'm a professionally-trained facilitator - being roped up at (effectively) two days' notice when no one has thought through three quarters of the agenda is a nightmare scenario. It meant changing my flight to arrange to have a four hour meeting in Glasgow on Monday with the two other people organising the conference, followed (hopefully) by me being able to put in another couple of hours on Monday night and two hours on Tuesday morning. It should also mean work over the weekend to prepare for Monday's meeting.
So I don't need the online application process to be a terminal screw-up.
I'm not allowed to use one of our networked computer terminals, which is all I have access to at work. If I take my laptop to work, there's no wif-fi access, except in Starbucks. So i wasn't best pleased to discover one of the questions in the application form asked me for work-related information I needed to obtain from work. So on Thursday night, having checked the info I put on the form is correct, I can't access the form. This involves two telephone calls to our HR (I was lucky someone was still at work at 6.45pm) and an email to the software manufacturer. Their faqs are hopeless as all the info relates to browser versions two or three years old.
No email that night. None in the morning before I go to work. Another call to HR. I have taken my laptop with me, just in case. They want me to check my emails again (can't do that from a work computer as it's blocked), so I have to go to Starbucks. There, I have trouble accessing their system. *rolleyes* Eventually I do - the software people unblocked my application and sent me an email an hour or so after I left for work. I submit my application.
This morning I start the online test. I left it until I had the place to myself, as otherwise, with the best will in the world, the OH will forget and interrupt me. given the tests are timed, I can't risk that.
So now I can't launch the tests. Another half an hour of trying to interpret their crap instructions for out-of-date browsers, in order to try three different browsers. Nope. None of them will launch the tests.
Gods - it was all I could do to be polite in my email to our HR. I didn't try in the email to the software support. Grrr!
I know I didn't try last weekend, because I got distracted doing something else. There's only a three week window, but I thought I'd have plenty of time if I did it on Wednesday night. After all - it's not due in until midday next Thursday, so I've got a whole week, right?
Wrong.
For one thing, my boss's boss rang Thursday afternoon to ask me to facilitate the two day conference our business unit has lined up for Tuesday and Wednesday next week. Now I'm a professionally-trained facilitator - being roped up at (effectively) two days' notice when no one has thought through three quarters of the agenda is a nightmare scenario. It meant changing my flight to arrange to have a four hour meeting in Glasgow on Monday with the two other people organising the conference, followed (hopefully) by me being able to put in another couple of hours on Monday night and two hours on Tuesday morning. It should also mean work over the weekend to prepare for Monday's meeting.
So I don't need the online application process to be a terminal screw-up.
I'm not allowed to use one of our networked computer terminals, which is all I have access to at work. If I take my laptop to work, there's no wif-fi access, except in Starbucks. So i wasn't best pleased to discover one of the questions in the application form asked me for work-related information I needed to obtain from work. So on Thursday night, having checked the info I put on the form is correct, I can't access the form. This involves two telephone calls to our HR (I was lucky someone was still at work at 6.45pm) and an email to the software manufacturer. Their faqs are hopeless as all the info relates to browser versions two or three years old.
No email that night. None in the morning before I go to work. Another call to HR. I have taken my laptop with me, just in case. They want me to check my emails again (can't do that from a work computer as it's blocked), so I have to go to Starbucks. There, I have trouble accessing their system. *rolleyes* Eventually I do - the software people unblocked my application and sent me an email an hour or so after I left for work. I submit my application.
This morning I start the online test. I left it until I had the place to myself, as otherwise, with the best will in the world, the OH will forget and interrupt me. given the tests are timed, I can't risk that.
So now I can't launch the tests. Another half an hour of trying to interpret their crap instructions for out-of-date browsers, in order to try three different browsers. Nope. None of them will launch the tests.
Gods - it was all I could do to be polite in my email to our HR. I didn't try in the email to the software support. Grrr!