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'Whither basic human dignity?' I couldn't agree more. At-Bristol have already rejected me three times for paid positions. It happens. However each time I have been told no, I cannot have any feedback on my application. I once applied for a position at the Institute of Physics. Again, I was unsuccessful, but after a ton of faceless rejections, I was amazed when my request for feedback was actually granted and a real person bothered to write me a polite and highly useful reply. I am a fairly recent graduate with two degrees in science and media communication. In the past I have been lucky enough to do an internship abroad where I was given generous living and travel expenses equivalent to a wage. I cannot help feeling it is unfortunate that so many organisations here will not pay minimum wage for internships. It feels rather like being told that we graduates are still not good enough for pay. On Fri, May 13, 2011 at 4:03 PM, Francis Sedgemore <[log in to unmask]>wrote: > Oli makes an excellent point concerning goodwill! > > The reason why the goodwill rule is so often not respected has in my view a > lot to do with managerialist ideology and the reinforcement of power > relationships. This has extended beyond paid employment into the realm of > unpaid internships, and it is now increasingly common to see adverts for > unpaid internships come with small print which declares, ungrammatically, > that "Due to limited resources wibble wibble…", unsuccessful candidates will > not be informed of the judge's decision. > > Whither basic human dignity? > > Talking of reinforcement, perhaps we should establish a symbolic prize for > good employment practices in science communication. Public praise for those > who behave with honour and decency, and anathema cast on the rest. What do > you think? > > Francis > > On 13 May 11, at 15:38, Oli Usher wrote: > > A minor thing to add to this interesting discussion - the goodwill > generated by paying even minimum wage for an intern is surely worth > something. Ditto the goodwill generated by taking the trouble to inform > unsuccessful applicants for jobs and give them feedback (price: a 2nd class > stamp plus about 5 minutes of your time), another thing which doesn't happen > nearly often enough. > > Science communication is a small field and you keep coming across the same > people and organisations. The people you're treating badly today are the > people you will be working with in a few years. Does it really serve your > organisation in the long term if you get a bad reputation? > > Oli > > > -- > Dr Francis Sedgemore > journalist and science writer > www.sedgemore.com <http://sedgemore.com/> > > ********************************************************************** > Further information about the psci-com discussion list, including list > archive, can be found at the list web site: > http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/psci-com.html You may also change your > settings and subscribe/unsubscribe to psci-com from the web site. > > Psci-com is part of the National Academic Mailing List Service, known as > 'JISCMail'. It adheres to the JISCMail Acceptible Use Policy: > http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/policyandsecurity/acceptableuse.html and to the > JISCMail guidelines for etiquette: > http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/policyandsecurity/etiquette.html > > Email commands: 1. 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