Reported Pause in RAF White Recruiting To Meet Diversity Targets
Damn sight more useful than looking at the national population in one go... How many 80 year olds do you think we're recruiting?
I thought that the idea behind all this recruitment targets was that the armed forces reflect society as a whole not a certain age group. It should be that percentage that is aimed for regardless of the age group that actually serves. FWIW I think the idea is bollox.
For sure. Beardy, It will soon be all their problem after all.
Time is short, and it should be sorted sooner rather than later…only about 10 days for the VVSOs to get their ducks in a row.
Looking forward, however
If a defence secretary (and the meejah) can hound a VSO out of post for buying too many curtains, and a bunch ofliars sorry politicos (and the meejah) can hound out a fellow VSP out of his post for having his cake and eating it at a party, why can’t the current DS (and the meejah) hound out someone who is clearly incompetent?
or am I being too simplistic here?
🤔
Time is short, and it should be sorted sooner rather than later…only about 10 days for the VVSOs to get their ducks in a row.
Looking forward, however
If a defence secretary (and the meejah) can hound a VSO out of post for buying too many curtains, and a bunch of
or am I being too simplistic here?
🤔
"It will just take a little snip young man and off you go to flight school."
I was attempting to suggest that most recruiting is of under 25s [and I accept that almost all is of under 30s].
My assumption is just an assumption, and I am in no position to justify it, or show it to be incorrect.
Are you?
Thread Starter
Recruiting Films 1970s: Phantoms roaring off, Jaguars struggling to get airborne, fire trucks, police dogs, ATC, proper meals in messes
Recruiting Video 2019: all D&I and of limited appeal with almost no front-line element
Recruiting Video 2019: all D&I and of limited appeal with almost no front-line element
That reminds me!
We see virtually no TV except sport, and that only when we visit family. We completely broke the TV habit early in Covid: too depressing.
Recently we have seen a lot of cricket, and have been amazed by the advertisements. Leaving aside that we don't understand half of them, we are struck by the large proportion of BAME actors, far far more than the percentages quoted upstream. I had not focussed on this piece of trivia until SWMBO shouted "an all-white cast!" last night.
It is probably politically incorrect to draw attention to the observation, but, if our armed forces are trying to be representative, why not the meejah?
Have a look and see for yourselves.
We see virtually no TV except sport, and that only when we visit family. We completely broke the TV habit early in Covid: too depressing.
Recently we have seen a lot of cricket, and have been amazed by the advertisements. Leaving aside that we don't understand half of them, we are struck by the large proportion of BAME actors, far far more than the percentages quoted upstream. I had not focussed on this piece of trivia until SWMBO shouted "an all-white cast!" last night.
It is probably politically incorrect to draw attention to the observation, but, if our armed forces are trying to be representative, why not the meejah?
Have a look and see for yourselves.
Avoid imitations
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I have to agree. Few adverts show the traditional values that our society is based on.
It's the new PC agenda. If you even notice it you are racist/sexist/homophobic and so on.
And there are so many adverts on TV that I now often forget which programme I was actually watching.
It's the new PC agenda. If you even notice it you are racist/sexist/homophobic and so on.
And there are so many adverts on TV that I now often forget which programme I was actually watching.
So the normal practice is to appoint first those who passed selection tests with the highest marks.
In order to increase diversity they're appointing people who passed selection with, perhaps only slightly, lower marks but who are female or from an ethnic minority.
Is that what it boils down to?
In order to increase diversity they're appointing people who passed selection with, perhaps only slightly, lower marks but who are female or from an ethnic minority.
Is that what it boils down to?
So the normal practice is to appoint first those who passed selection tests with the highest marks.
In order to increase diversity they're appointing people who passed selection with, perhaps only slightly, lower marks but who are female or from an ethnic minority.
Is that what it boils down to?
In order to increase diversity they're appointing people who passed selection with, perhaps only slightly, lower marks but who are female or from an ethnic minority.
Is that what it boils down to?
The normal practice is "first past the post" - those who meet the selection criteria first, get in.
What they wanted to do was make sure that the first in were those who also happened to be female or an ethnic minority, juggling around the timetable and bypassing others on the list.
A selection test is inherently a predictive process which tries to predict which candidates will perform best at or after some point in the future.
It does not measure future performance, it predicts it. If you are able to rank the performance of the candidates you accept at some future point, you get the feedback you need to improve your selection process.
Let's say your selection process starts out taking, for example, university graduates with either history degrees or engineering degrees, and ranks them on their academic records.
Now lets say your feedback process 2 or 5 or 10 years down the line tells you that actually history graduates are consistently slightly outperforming engineering graduates as officers.
At this point, you'd go back and weight their academic results slightly higher. You'd say to yourself "my old judgement about who will do best is consistently slightly off, so despite what I think, I need to tweak it.
There is no shame in accepting that when you try your best to use what you hope is an objective selection process to get the best candidates, you consistently discount (bias against, consciously or otherwise) certain classes of candidate, and choosing to identify membership of one of those classes as an unrecognised factor to be added to your selection process.
If your feedback process says that race or gender seems to result in bias, you'd do well to insert race into your selection process.
But you sure as hell don't decide that because a balanced selection process accepts approximately the same proportion of Scottish ancestry as of Irish ancestry (insert other examples if you like) as you see in qualified potential applicants, that when the proportion of Scots has been a bit low for a while, it is time to accept ONLY Scots. Past selection errors don't justify swinging too far the opposite direction today.
Meeting a particular proportion of different races in the entire organisation as a whole by pumping in lots of minorities today should not be the objective; recruiting a particular proportion (with inevitable scatter due to small sample sizes) in each intake should be the objective.
Remember in WWII, the things that were rarely ever damaged on returning bombers were in fact the weak points?
Similarly, the people you don't succeeded in recruiting despite them appearing to be good candidates are the people your advertising needs to appeal to.
So you go out and find smart cookies outside the RAF who are a year or two older than your usual candidates and you survey them to find out why they didn't consider (or rejected) the RAF as a career, and then your address those issues in your advertising.
Getting people interested in planes is easy, getting them to see past their own misconceptions about joining the military is much more important.
Advertising is the first step of your recruiting selection process, you don't need to inspire every Tom, Dick and Harry to apply, you need to persuade as many of the very best as you can that the RAF offers them a better future than their high performing mates will get elsewhere.
It does not measure future performance, it predicts it. If you are able to rank the performance of the candidates you accept at some future point, you get the feedback you need to improve your selection process.
Let's say your selection process starts out taking, for example, university graduates with either history degrees or engineering degrees, and ranks them on their academic records.
Now lets say your feedback process 2 or 5 or 10 years down the line tells you that actually history graduates are consistently slightly outperforming engineering graduates as officers.
At this point, you'd go back and weight their academic results slightly higher. You'd say to yourself "my old judgement about who will do best is consistently slightly off, so despite what I think, I need to tweak it.
There is no shame in accepting that when you try your best to use what you hope is an objective selection process to get the best candidates, you consistently discount (bias against, consciously or otherwise) certain classes of candidate, and choosing to identify membership of one of those classes as an unrecognised factor to be added to your selection process.
If your feedback process says that race or gender seems to result in bias, you'd do well to insert race into your selection process.
But you sure as hell don't decide that because a balanced selection process accepts approximately the same proportion of Scottish ancestry as of Irish ancestry (insert other examples if you like) as you see in qualified potential applicants, that when the proportion of Scots has been a bit low for a while, it is time to accept ONLY Scots. Past selection errors don't justify swinging too far the opposite direction today.
Meeting a particular proportion of different races in the entire organisation as a whole by pumping in lots of minorities today should not be the objective; recruiting a particular proportion (with inevitable scatter due to small sample sizes) in each intake should be the objective.
Recruiting Video 2019: all D&I and of limited appeal with almost no front-line element
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X98EyRzQak8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X98EyRzQak8
Similarly, the people you don't succeeded in recruiting despite them appearing to be good candidates are the people your advertising needs to appeal to.
So you go out and find smart cookies outside the RAF who are a year or two older than your usual candidates and you survey them to find out why they didn't consider (or rejected) the RAF as a career, and then your address those issues in your advertising.
Getting people interested in planes is easy, getting them to see past their own misconceptions about joining the military is much more important.
Advertising is the first step of your recruiting selection process, you don't need to inspire every Tom, Dick and Harry to apply, you need to persuade as many of the very best as you can that the RAF offers them a better future than their high performing mates will get elsewhere.
Last edited by nonsense; 27th Aug 2022 at 12:43.
One of the biggest problems of this (as has been discussed before) is that recruiting applicants on a quota system of positive discrimination result in one of two things. Either a higher failure rate or a changing of standards. Neither of these is beneficial. A higher failure rate just confirms that this job is not for this area of the population thereby further reducing the applicant numbers from this demographic area. A changing of standards, in as much as a lower of standards, is not something that is desirous in any area, whether military or commercial.
Comment by a Senior (white) SAAF officer as the quota system became apparent.
" Aeroplanes are not Racist. They kill idiots regardless of their colour."
" Aeroplanes are not Racist. They kill idiots regardless of their colour."
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Has anyone seen the RAF Air Cadets web page??
What the hell were they thinking??
https://www.raf.mod.uk/aircadets/
What the hell were they thinking??
https://www.raf.mod.uk/aircadets/
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Yes, that's Diverse. But then so was 144 (Richmond) Squadron in the 1960s. And we all just got on with being Cadets!
Has anyone seen the RAF Air Cadets web page??
What the hell were they thinking??
https://www.raf.mod.uk/aircadets/
What the hell were they thinking??
https://www.raf.mod.uk/aircadets/
...it actually shows cadets in a glider.
Only we Brits do irony.
Ironical, is it not?
Ironical, is it not?
Recruiting Films 1970s: Phantoms roaring off, Jaguars struggling to get airborne, fire trucks, police dogs, ATC, proper meals in messes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WE8d9l4JyJI
Recruiting Video 2019: all D&I and of limited appeal with almost no front-line element
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X98EyRzQak8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WE8d9l4JyJI
Recruiting Video 2019: all D&I and of limited appeal with almost no front-line element
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X98EyRzQak8