My desk is awash with the CVs of would-be Planners and would-be-far-better-paid Planners.
I find it quite easy to be brutal about the senior people who are looking to manage their careers, and make the next “smart move” – and so they’ve had a fifty per cent success rate with me. The great ones are great, the others make me want to self-harm just to end the boredom.
However, I am as soft as a marshmallow, being softened in a frying pan, in full sunlight when it comes to the people who just want a chance to “be a Planner” – especially when they have done something like left their home country to come to London because it’s “the home of Planning”. If find myself thinking “Well, if I did a lot more of the work myself and managed to get this person a training budget, in three years’ time, she could be great…” Fortunately, I interviewed her alongside Old Friend in Advertising (who has recently been promoted to a Global role, so is doing EXACTLY the same job as me) and she was much better at asking the brutal questions (not in the interview, but of me, afterwards) such as “How much help is she going to be to you?”, “How much time can you invest in her?”
Thankfully, I knew I had more people to see, because I was within a hair’s breadth of clasping her in my arms and saying “Congratulations! You’re hired!” and ordering Champagne – so it was only with the ultimate concentration that I managed to think into the future and ask myself: “Will either of us profit from my employing her?”… and thinking to myself “I’m just not sure”.
Eiljert Gabbles On 