Metadata
- Author: Lindsay Clark
- Full Title:: Excel Recruitment Time Bomb Makes Top Trainee Doctors ‘Unappointable’
- Category:: 🗞️Articles
- URL:: https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/12/excel_anesthetist_recruitment_blunder/
- Finished date:: 2023-10-13
Highlights
Only when one of the candidates challenged the decision did ANRO realize its error. A subsequent Significant Incident Review showed a complex and confused approach to using spreadsheets led to the disaster. (View Highlight)
The interview scores are stored in an Excel spreadsheet. Each of the seven [UK] recruitment regions creates a separate spreadsheet, but these have no standardised template, naming convention or structure. After being manually amended, all of the various scores are entered into a Master spreadsheet. This is carried out row-by-row and takes several days, likely to be subject to interruptions,” the report said. (View Highlight)
The report – only published in July following a Freedom of Information request – reveals that poor choice of technology for organization-wide decision-making was compounded by inconsistent practice, including the erratic use of Excel’s “VLOOKUP” function designed to transpose data from one spreadsheet or data source to another. (View Highlight)