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+--- Thread: Current job advert (/showthread.php?tid=4038)
Current job advert - BAJR - 5th August 2011
I do believe this has been a useful thread. and perhaps with more support, I could reinforce job titles to grades/responsibility.
Perhaps also a look at what is actually required to carry out various elements of the 'job' - I realise that this has been partly completed already by Steve Carter et al, for the NVQ evaluation. but a simpler version is surely possible.
I can see long nights ahead.
As REd Earth says, I, like you, agree with all the constructive posts.
Current job advert - Boxoffrogs - 5th August 2011
DBA? What ever happened to the 250+ page EIA I had to do?
Current job advert - RedEarth - 5th August 2011
The other thing about a lot of DBA/EIA type reports is the endless sections outlining every single planning policy etc in great detail, and only then have a paragraph or so on the actual results before essentially concluding 'a watching brief should probably take care of it'. Not sure they are worth the paper they are written on. Anyway, that is off topic, was just reminded having had to read one this morning.
Current job advert - Unitof1 - 5th August 2011
kev you have to travel back to the 80s to get archaeologist in your passport.
Current job advert - RedEarth - 5th August 2011
Unitof1 Wrote:kev you have to travel back to the 80s to get archaeologist in your passport.
I new that DeLorean would come in handy!
Current job advert - Noddy - 5th August 2011
vulpes Wrote:Oh, and Noddy, the 2 nearby Council units to me both place PO above Supervisor - is that not the norm? It's certainly reflected in BAJRs grade descriptions. Y'know, the ones where a PO is at Grade 5, and above a supervisor.
Yeah in archaeology definitely, I agree. In other departments not always...
If people feel job titles are really that important they should be thinking about changing them to what the engineering/consultancy firms use....so we are treated as professionals rather than contractors....
Current job advert - Monkey - 5th August 2011
I'm currently aware of several units where they class all there staff between Project Manager and Site Assistant as Assistant Supervisors.
End result (at one unit in particular) is that you have an assistant supervisor running several large projects at once but being paid the lowest level for a supervisor.
The unit in question, however always informs the local government archaeologists that the people in question are Project Officers. Although in terms of experience they clearly are project officer level.
As far as I'm aware there have been promotions all pay rises among the staff since 2008. So AS definitely are up on them there.
The excuse as always is the current recession, despite a fairly healthy turnover of work.
Current job advert - Dinosaur - 5th August 2011
Wow, pop out to spend a merry day shovelling out yet more Victorian garden soil (0.6m and still not all out, been at it all week, good spoil heap though!) and pages more sense (mostly) to brighten my evening!
I've had occasion to 'ghost write' a fair number of sites of all sizes, usually due to the perennial problem of people moving on during the interminable PX process, from small watching briefs up to publishing largish urban sites, and it is not for the inexperienced - many years supervisorial site experience is required to be able to untangle the often tortuous site record and 'see through' some of the more obscure descriptions that people manage to write on context sheets, tease-out the stratigraphic impossibilities, spot where specialists have completely misunderstood the context of the material they've been playing with etc etc. There is absolutely no way a junior staff-member back in the office who has no direct experience of the site can possibly be capable of doing this to a competent standard, and I'm absolutely appalled that some units think they can get away with such shoddy practice - although it could explain some of the c**p site reports I've been seeing recently...
- oh, and as Jack knows, I quite often don't even put my name on as an author unless I've done a lot to an unfinished text (50%+), often go for 'edited for publication by' somewhere in the acknowledgements - I've been the victim a few times of my work (reports, photos etc) appearing attributed to others, and its b***dy annoying
! After a decade or two of working the circuit one of the reasons I've nailed my colours to my current employer's mast is that we're encouraged as far as possible to get the maximum out of any project and take it wherever the archaeology's going, within budgetery limits of course, but the management's usually up for making a case to the client for more money if its something good (ok, ok, so not always successfully), and means we've also got a good reputation with all the local curators. Part of this includes high levels of internal peer-review - the POs, SPOs and managers are all encouraged to discuss and input into any projects, not just their own, and while 'unusual' ideas get floated regularly, if they're b***ocks they soon get shot down. If we're going to say that nothing turned up on a WB we're expected to be able to demonstrate this to anyone who wants definitive negative evidence, and also come up with, as far as possible, a reason why we thought nothing was there (possibly my best was a job where the local curator demanded a watching brief on a cable trench along the bottom of a 30' deep modern road cutting and then across a former landfill....kid you not! Enjoyed writing that one up!!!!). Isn't all this roughly how all units should operate? - would be good for the archaeology anyway :face-thinks:
DBAs - over the last few years it's quite likely that I've actually made more significant discoveries while preparing DBAs/PDs than I have on site - amazing what you can tease out of borehole data! On my current job we're annoyingly not going deep enough to have a decent look at the previously unsuspected upstanding rampart bank that I discovered from an evening in with a bottle of wine and the borehole data - no idea of date but its got a Norman castle wall terraced into the front of it, and a small sondage in the base of a trial trench confirmed that it ain't natural
Easier than digging holes but you ain't gonna find stuff like that by just regurgetating HER data parrot-like :0
Current job advert - BAJR - 5th August 2011
Quote:DBAs - over the last few years it's quite likely that I've actually made more significant discoveries while preparing DBAs/PDs than I have on site
and yet another piece of golden sense! How true
Current job advert - Unitof1 - 6th August 2011
Quote:I would call that evaluation data golden sense.
borehole data.