An open letter to Union Bank

It was on the evening of Wednesday, October 23, 2013 that I received a call from someone close to me. She had left the house earlier that day to complete her one-week branch attachment, the last phase of her six weeks training with Union Bank.

She sounded very unhappy as she broke the sad news to me that instead of a deployment letter to a branch of the bank, she was given a rejection letter. The sad news ruined the remaining part of my day. It was difficult for me to fully comprehend what had actually happened.

What kind of recruitment process will make you resign from a job to take up another only to be turned down in the end without any concrete reason? In a country where there are no jobs! No reason whatsoever was stated in the letter she was given. At least I would have expected that the human resources department of Union Bank would have been kind enough to sit her and the other three people involved down and explain to them why they were rejected or even state it in the letter explicitly.

Why would Union Bank invest so heavily in them during the six weeks intensive training, take them through a-week branch attachment, give then staff identification number and card, and in the end tell them to go home without job? This was after she had written a test, passed through the interview stage, and was sent a letter via email for training. It would have been appropriate for Union Bank to terminate the employment contract right after training school if she was found wanting in the course of training.

What is most painful is that she now sits at home after she was made to resign from her former job. One lady who was also affected had to resign from a N150,000-monthly job when she got the Union Bank offer. Now she is also back in the job market. How cruel and painful can this be?

This is an open request to the management of Union Bank to look into this matter and reconsider its new mode of recruitment. This is not a profitable way to recruit new hands. In a society where things work, the affected candidates deserve to be fully compensated and adequate reason given as to why they were rejected so that they won’t repeat the same mistakes next time, that is, if they were ever found wanting. This kind of recruitment procedure has given room to speculation that their names may have been substituted with those taken through the backdoor. How true can this be? Well, Union Bank needs to provide answer to this.

By: FUNKE OSAE-BROWN