UNPAID ROLE APPEARED IN EMAIL ALERT FROM THIRD-PARTY JOB BOARD IN JANUARY
*GRADUATE FOG EXCLUSIVE!*
A graduate has told Graduate Fog that she saw the Ritz’s advert for an unpaid HR intern back in January, advertised through a third-party job board called Indeed.co.uk (ad as it currently appears here). This calls into question the Ritz’s claim that the internship was “erroneously posted” on its website “in draft format”, on their “online recruitment system” only and that is was “not a role that was recruited for”.
In light of this development. Graduate Fog today wrote back to the Ritz, to ask for further explanation of what happened:
To: The Ritz London
From: Graduate Fog
Date: 1 March 2013, 13.28
Subject: Re: Re: Re: The Ritz LondonHi [NAME REMOVED BY GRADUATE FOG]
As you may have seen, I posted your response about the internship advert on Graduate Fog yesterday.
Now, a graduate has come forward and said that she saw the advert on a job alert email from Indeed.co.uk on the 11th January 2013.
Clearly, this raises further questions. In your previous email to me, you said that the advert was “erroneously posted” in “draft format” on the Ritz’s site and was “not a role that was recruited for”. You also suggested that this advert was only ever posted on the Ritz’s own “online recruitment system”.
If that is the case, can you explain how this job advert ended up in a third-party email alert sent to thousands of job-hunting graduates? Presumably you received quite a few responses. Did that not alert you to the fact that this advert had somehow escaped your own systems and was now being promoted in the wider community? What did you do with those responses? And are you still maintaining that this internship never happened?
With thanks again
Tanya de Grunwald
Founder, Graduate Fog
The graduate says she tweeted the link to Intern Aware and the Ritz London around the time she saw the advert, so it remains unclear how the Ritz could have been unaware that the advert was being promoted publicly. There are certainly a lot of questions for the Ritz to answer – we will let you know when we hear back…
*HAVE YOU INTERNED UNPAID AT THE RITZ?
Did you do this HR internship – or another unpaid internship at the Ritz? Tell us about it below
It seems pretty clear that The Ritz (like many employers when they are caught with their fingers in the back pocket of an unpaid worker) are lying through every orifice they can muster.
Shameful, but entirely expected from a company who now sees their shabby practices have been flushed out into the open.
They should be ashamed of themselves… first for posting the internship in the first place and second for lying about it and implying that we’re the liars!!
Its not just the Ritz that is doing this with Interns:
An unpaid, full time internship with Chester Zoo (who get around it by acting as a charity)
With the ticket price so high, surely they could afford to pay someone!
http://chester.prospects.ac.uk/jobseeker/vacancy/search.html?execution=e2s6