ESPAIN IS DIFFERENT

Applying for the Espanish Consulate in London: Administration for the 21st century December 13, 2009

Applying for the Espanish Consulate in London is not an easy task. An essential skill you will need to get informed about the current vacancies in the Consulate (and other institutions that the Espanish government has in London) is loving spending time in the developing country-like consulate that Espain has near Sloan Square.  You will need to check regularly the notice boards in the building as they rarely will post the new vacancies on the website of the consulate. It is frustrating to see how the Espanish government tries to show to the world how modern the country is (As a good example see “domed ceiling of the Chamber for Human Rights and the Alliance of Civilizations” controversy) and does not show the will to develop a decent human resources selection process in one of its principal consulates in the World.

But if the problems to apply in the institution were only these it wouldn’t be a big problem. Unfortunately this is only the first of a chain:

After passing every single exam nobody reports you the marks as they are incapable of sending you an email or posting it in the Consulado website. All what you have to do is wasting your morning to go personally to the Consulate building to ask for your mark. Also, you may think, why not calling?. But calling where?, to the voice machine of the Consulate?. The funny thing is that the selection staff will tell you to call them to this number to dreadfully find the charming voice of the machine. Cynical at best, isn’t it?. No need to mention that communication is not their strength.

Test calendars.  But where?, What’s that?. Following the best tradition of our glorious administration, the Consulate selection staff sets the dates on cuando me sale de los cojones basis (or, in other words, “when I f******want to!”). People have lives, jobs, sons, girlfriends, mums, duties and so on. But these people apparently think everybody is bored in their homes with nothing to do but going to ask when will be the date of the next exam. You only know the date of the next days after the exam. So, if you have an important appointment and have the misfortune that coincides with your exam… I am afraid!, you are fucked up!. Some people even flight from Spain to take part in the selection process. Poor!. They don’t know what they are doing but spending bucks uselessly. They may better go and spend this money in proper holidays or giving it for charity. At least this money will find a good end.

Merits and internal promotion. After passing all the tests and doing well you can even think of being the fortunate who is going in possession of the job vacancy. This is far from the truth the least. No matter the punctuation you obtain that if some member of the government staff in London is doing the exams with you and get into the final the job is his/ hers. When you come to do these exam at first you are unaware of this detail: your possibilities are scarce. The reason is that experience in similar positions gives you lots of points. In this rationale, no matter how well one has performed, that these people have an unbeatable advantage over you that it is almost impossible to overcome. You find this after having asked for permissions at work, studies or whatever based on these grounds. Is all this fair?. No, ladies and gentlemen, it is a joke.
Unfortunately this is only a drop in the ocean and there are and there will be more stories like this.