What's it(s) mean?

[j4]

I asked AQA: "What's the average length of time for which UK jobs at AQA are advertised on the website? i.e. How long does it take for all/any positions to be filled? Thanks!"

AQA replied: "There's no average length of time, it just depends on the number of vacancies and the response. AQA advises applying immediately when they're advertised."

Now, call me a pedant, but I don't believe it's technically true that there's "no average length of time". I can entirely believe that they don't set a maximum or minimum length of time, and/or that they just don't want to tell me, but that's an entirely different kettle of question marks.

Comments

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

They could and perhaps should have answered: "There's no meaningful average..." etc. and expanded their answer with an explanation about different types of vacancy taking different times to fill, and some recruitment campaigns being 'one-off' pitches to a single candidate for a single post which, by definition, could have no meaningful statistical metadata.

Another point is that the arithmetic mean is meaningless in this type of data set, and a modal definition of the 'average' is far more useful:

"Vacancies can take anything between three days and three months to fill, but we have found that nearly half are filled in six to eight weeks; there is a 'mode' or peak at seven weeks that represents the response lag, interview shortlisting and acceptance-processing, plus the common one-month notice period for recruiting staff from rival companies. A secondary peak exists at sixteen weeks, as any vacancy unfilled after ten weeks is reappraised, and readvertised with a higher publicity budget and, if necessary, with a higher salary."

Which means that those hypothetical figures have two 'modes' for you to use as an average, a meaningless mean, and a median of five years between the one job they filled on the day with a phone call, and the vacancy they're still advertising since the last audio-typist with relevant experience in the fish-curing and smoking industry resigned in 1997.

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

Good luck fitting that paragraph into 153 characters.

[j4.livejournal.com]

and expanded their answer with an explanation about different types of vacancy taking different times to fill

Well, they're limited to 160 characters, so not much room for explanation... And I was talking about the question-answerer vacancies (and I think they knew that, though yes, I should have been more specific, but my question was also limited to 160 chars!) which are not 'recruitment pitches' so much as a scrum to get to the jobs first.

FWIW, I'd have been entirely happy with "We don't have statistics on this but all vacancies are usually filled within a few hours/a day/etc." But I am enjoying the pedantry. 8-)

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

This is why I have taken to posting up notices when I see them, to give my friends list at least a heads-up on the vacancies, and I do try to point out the urgency of applying then and there.

At least 6 people have been taken on since I started as a result, which is rather cool. :)

[j4.livejournal.com]

Well, this is one of the reasons why I was asking; last time I saw your announcement I clicked through excitedly only to find that all the vacancies had already gone, and I'm fairly sure that was only a couple of hours after you'd posted it! (Though LJ timestamps are a whole nother question, admittedly.)

I suppose what I should do is have my application ready and prepared, and then set up some kind of automated thingy to tell me when that page changes, and then some other kind of automated thingy to fire off the email...

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

Well, I can send you a text or email next time I see the ad if you like. Not knowing who would be interested and who wouldn't, it's difficult to know what to do more than just post it up. (You might have noticed I addressed the previous post to one specific user on my friends list, as I'd been discussing it with her elsewhere.)

[j4.livejournal.com]

If you did happen to see vacancies going & let me know I'd almost certainly be interested, but I'm really not expecting you to do my job-hunting for me, & it was good of you to post it at all! It was just a shame that by the time I got there "the cupboard was bare"...