Both sides of the desk

With my re-awakened job hunting efforts, I'm now hoping to recruit as well as hoping to be recruitied.

Our very good contractor had to leave for health reasons (couldn't handle the pressure, if you ask me, the Aussie wimp). It's important that we recruit a replacement quickly as we're going to be moving offices soon. In case you don't know, that requires an awful lot of IT involvement.

We're hoping our contractor will get fixed quickly (he returned to Australia as the health service is speedier there) and be able to return. Reality is we can't hang around and take the risk.

The first few c.v.s from agencies were atrocious. One was nine pages. Nine pages! As you can imagine, that means the English wasn't very good at all.

To be fair to all recruits I score each c.v. against a list of requirements. But in this case I ended up writing in the spreadsheet "gave up".

The other c.v. was shorter but no better. I asked our HR colleague to speak to the agency, one who really should know better, about this poor quality. They're supposed to screen c.v.s for us.

Meanwhile I used my network of contacts. This included meeting a girl in a nightclub, talking to her and giving her my card so that a friend of her's could contact me about the role. I'm so smooth.

Her friend duly sent me his c.v. In it he included the fact that he's in the International Brotherhood of Magicians and has taught himself to juggle.