What do people who “fall into recruitment” study?

The following article was published on Square Mile

“Education, education education”. These were the words of war monger Jonathan Powell, conveyed to the nation through the lips of the ever coy Tony Blair- the channeler of right wing ventriloquism. Unfortunately these words were not intended to mean we’d become a nation of Chinese or Indian-esque super efficient geniuses. Rather, they meant we’d become so thick we’d conflate the word polytechnic with university.

So now, consultants, risk specialists and investment bankers with PHDs in econometrics and quantitative analysis are subjected to brutal cold calls from those who would have been (happily) decorating their houses and unblocking their drains had the three evil E’s never been implemented in such a grotesque manner.

Recruitment Rehab has discovered the most popular undergraduate courses for recruiters who would have been manual labourers (had the past 14 years of education policy been different).

To end up in recruitment it seems you should (passively) “study” one of the following:

5. Real Estate Management at Oxford Brookes University

4. Administration at South Bank University

3. Fashion Marketing at London Metropolitan University

2. “Business Management” at Brunel University

And the most popular of all...

Employment for Dummies (self taught over 6 years from your bedroom).

You will certainly deserve the letters B.A. after your name and most likely the letters S.T.A.R.D too.

Why being a lefty liberal might leave you on the wrong side of right!

I finally got through to a candidate who picked up his phone. I wish I hadn’t. This poor confused liberal has had his head screwed worse than me.

What better summer could one have than my candidate? First he had to cancel his very expensive holiday to Norway because some nutter (who looks like Julian Assange’s bloated evil twin) after probably just being served a few too many bad curries gets annoyed with Muslims (despite probably being served by Hindus but they all look the same don't they?) and takes things a bit too far (right) out of hand by massacring some innocent kids. (Somebody should have told him they were NOT aspiring to become recruitment consultants)!

On top of that my candidate found out his wife was sleeping with the Nigerian refugee who collects the rubbish ( apparently “out of sympathy”- he must have left too many Guardian newspapers lying around the house for her to read). It turns out she now has some strange STD which has left her infertile. This is not good news for more reasons than you think. You see on the wedding night she lovingly looked him in the eyes and said: “no matter what happens to us we must stay together for our kids”. Yes, I know what you’re thinking. To save his marriage he’ll  now have to adopt some children; probably the cousins of her Nigerian lover. The elderly couple down the road who have the Daily Mail delivered won’t be pleased.

Anyway, desperate to take out his sexual frustration this normally very rational citizen bought a copy of the The Sun for some page 3 frolics. (His internet connection was down you see and the guy behind the counter knows his boss so that left the top shelf out of reach). With the hurt of betrayal overpowering any chance of arousal he began reading the words instead and with all the events going on in the background he dangerously found the right wing racist ranting resonating within him!!! Shocked at this out of body like experience he zipped up his trousers and quickly logged onto http://www.libdems.org.uk/ to revive his lenient liberal tendencies. Needless to say when he saw Nick Clegg’s face he witnessed more betrayal, more disappointment and like the limp piece of flesh between his legs his liberalism never rose to the occasion.

He turned up to work the next day to discover New Labour’s theme tune echoing in his head. Indeed things could only get better. He was told via email his job would be offshored to a computer in India. This, he says, is only mildly better than it being offshored to a curly haired Indian called Nigel who uses cockney slang with an Indian accent.

All his hopes were ultimately dashed however when he realised this meant he’d have to take cold calls from dim witted recruiters like me. We are the residue of further left wing betrayal- New Labour. Had it not been for their brilliant plan to send every dyslexic 18 year old and his ADHD suffering sister to “university”, we may have become plumbers and joiners servicing his desperate house...and housewife. Instead, forced to find “graduate” work we find ourselves, hair gelled with pointy shoes in George shirts and Primark underwear, climbing the same steps outside Bank station as Saville Row pin striped Masters of the Universe...and confused liberal accountants, punting everything under the sun as “an exciting new opportunity”.

My candidate is losing his wife to a Nigerian, his job to India, his children to Nigerians again, he now reads The Sun instead of The Guardian and finds the only person he can confide in is a recruitment consultant...(who was raised by Pakistani foster parents after a stint with Nick Griffin's parents). Then, looking for a new job he logs onto efinancialcareers and finds this.

I asked him to meet me for a coffee at the Nero next to Liverpool Street station this morning to talk to him about a “fantastic opportunity” at Barclays Capital (that doesn’t exist).He turned up with an EDL banner to tell me he’d “found a new calling in life”.

I called the police but they were too busy being outsourced to Bangladesh to do anything about it. Should I be worried about my new racist candidate? 

How to escape a life in recruitment

The day you received a letter of acceptance from London South Bank University to study Hospitality Management your life was doomed.

You were always two grades above the class dunce but in the three years of debauchery during which you forgot how to spell, multiply and divide, he excelled through his plumbing apprentice and stepped onto the property ladder. You, after bar work in Buenos Aires and  lazing around a ski resort in Switzerland , decided to “get a real job”. To further prove your lack of brain cells you assumed this to be a job in recruitment.

It started out well. You billed easily, earning as much as the lawyers and doctors who left school with five A’s. You were partying on the continent every third weekend and drunk off free booze on the last Friday of every month.

Now the saturated market has slowed down and you can barely afford to pay your rent. You want out from this soul destroying trap but there are three problems: you have no other skill set to survive a life outside of sales; you don’t have enough savings (or intelligence) to pursue new qualifications; and you don’t have the guts (or ideas) to set up your own business.

Regardless, you come to work every day intending to hand in your notice but become incontinent whenever your boss asks: “so what did you wanna talk about”?

Then a bulb lights up. You will get yourself fired! You will do something so bad that no consultancy will want to hire you again and you will be eternally free from life as a phone monkey. You will sign on and experience something far more stimulating; watching This Morning every day as your mind turns to an even softer, smaller mush.

The problem is - if you were ever unfortunate enough to be half decent - it is easier to get hired than fired in recruitment. Consultancies know idiots who sacrifice their autonomy to do their boss' dirty work (because they are “money motivated”) only come along every second day. As the tuition fees hike comes into effect next year and the number of new graduates from polytechnics decreases, the gold rush of naïve weasels willing to bash phones will fall. Performing or not, your employer needs you as a punching bag.

You can, however, try the following.

1 Get you company kicked off a major PSL

The best way to do this is to blatantly headhunt from such a client. Send out a mass email about a "fantastic opportunity" at a specified bank to all contacts at this account including hiring managers and HR staff.  Follow up with phone calls every hour to the mobile of hiring managers. Ideally you’ll end up pestering one whilst on their summer holiday

.2. Verbally abuse the global head of your practice area at a major account

Simple

3. Turn up late every day

Be creative with your excuses on this one. Try everything from “the sleeping pills were too strong” to “I had an interview with a competitor”.

I speak from experience when I say it is unlikely these will work. If not, tell your boss you slept with his wife. If your boss is single there is no way out!