I was demoted after four months as an ID administrator.
I worked in a small office with four women and one other man.
We had to input details of new employees who needed security IDs to pass through high security areas onto excel spreadsheets, gather their five year employment references, criminal record checks, ID photos etc, have them sign security agreements, send packs to business support and then arrange appointments for cleared IDs to be picked up.
Target was ten a week and the best I managed was four a couple of times. Worst was two.
It was quite easy when the applicants history was simple and all of the referees responded quickly. A lot of them couldn’t do it right however, or took days or weeks to respond. Often the applicants themselves were unresponsive, or responsive but didn’t do what I asked. I didn’t escalate to my manager enough. Overseas checks can also be complicated because there may be an issue with the company and there is nothing like Companies House on an HMRC five-year history to go by. One person however, I just flat out forgot about for a month. He said that I had given up on him, so he was struck off after telling my manager to shove the job.
I was able to get good applicants through in fast time but I wasn’t good enough with problematic applicants or referees, which I had a lot of. Last person I got was a good friend who had four fine years in England, but worked a work scheme in Amsterdam where he was paid for by the government. He didn’t describe it as a work scheme until after a series of stressful conversations and I ended up scanning about three hundred pages of a Dutch bank statement book and typing a file note. His was the last ID that I sent off for and got, on the day of my demotion.
Final straw was me having a series of panic attacks at a time where we had won another contract. I had one and went home because I couldn’t breathe properly, had one the day after so I went to A&E because I thought that it was more serious, then was medically written off after having one more the morning after. The Monday after, I was told respectfully that it wasn’t working out and that I was offered a position that was lower than what I was doing, but higher than what I was before. I checked it out, liked it, but the schedule was directly opposite my girlfriends, so I chose to go back to my old job.
The department actually had a very high turnover rate. I took over from somebody else who had been demoted and the man was demoted a few weeks before I was.
I wasn’t totally inept and did get ideal candidates through, but I wasn’t a good fit for that job. I don’t like the office environment at all, I prefer to be physically active and I hate chasing people. I was offered a £21.000 per annum contract with another company a few months after, but I turned it down.