Refresh your CV on Monster and you get things like this in your mailbox. The details have not been changed to spare the guilty...
Dear Seven Dials
Your CV has been reviewed online and generated some interest with one of our Senior Consultants at our London offices.
I would be most grateful if you could call me on 077224 30666 to discuss your requirements alternatively email mmcbride@active-career.co.uk at your earliest convenience with a view to scheduling an appointment.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Kind regards,
Melissa McBride
Active Career Management Ltd
133 Houndsditch
London
EC3A 7BX
M: 07722 430666
F: 020 3402 6160
E: mmcbride@active-career.co.uk
W:www.active-career.co.uk
Active Career Transition is a real company. What they provide is career counselling, outsourcing and HR advisory services. They aren't employment agencies and they don't know where the jobs are. They make the majority of their money from companies, mostly from outsourcing assignments, and the rest from charging individual job-seekers for career counselling. Way back in the 90's I went along to a company like them and heard what was so obviously a rehearsed sales spiel, complete with a little ceremony in which the "senior consultant" signed a form "accepting" me as a suitable person to be a client. I can't remember what they charged, but I think there was mention of a career development grant, which was a £5,000 loan from the Government for suitable purposes, which that firm was obviously providing. Can you spell "bottom feeder"?
No, I'm not being harsh. Don't get me started on the whole career-change thing (actually, I will, but not now). The reason you know it doesn't work is that you have never met anyone who speaks highly of them, or indeed at all about them. If it did work, the guys doing the advising - all mysteriously former "senior managers" in name companies who have decided that A Freelancer's Life Is The Life For Them - would have proper jobs with real companies instead of trying to flog you the psychometric testing. (The psychometric testing is always extra.)
Monday, 25 October 2010
Friday, 22 October 2010
How Not To Write A Job Description
Can you spot the give-away verb in this genuine blurb? You do not want to know where I found this, or how much of the company you, the taxpayer, own.
"This suite of programmes and events delivers relevant content and practical tools along with extensive networking and knowledge sharing opportunities. Development is aligned to the Leadership Diamond which focuses on ‘Judgement’, ‘Drive’, ‘Influence’ and ’Execution’ and encapsulates our Values. Our Executive Development approach aims to build on your existing talents and leadership capabilities enabling you to:
· Inspire confidence, restore trust, create followership
· Be a role model for our Vision and Values
· Deliver our strategic agenda around cost, customer leadership and capital efficiency
· Navigate the scale and complexity of our new business
· Be expert in risk management and compliance"
The answer is below, but you'll have to highlight the rest of the page.
That’s right “restore” trust. Not “maintain” or “deepen” or even why would you need to do anything about trust because why would it be an issue? But “restore”. Because it’s shot.
"This suite of programmes and events delivers relevant content and practical tools along with extensive networking and knowledge sharing opportunities. Development is aligned to the Leadership Diamond which focuses on ‘Judgement’, ‘Drive’, ‘Influence’ and ’Execution’ and encapsulates our Values. Our Executive Development approach aims to build on your existing talents and leadership capabilities enabling you to:
· Inspire confidence, restore trust, create followership
· Be a role model for our Vision and Values
· Deliver our strategic agenda around cost, customer leadership and capital efficiency
· Navigate the scale and complexity of our new business
· Be expert in risk management and compliance"
The answer is below, but you'll have to highlight the rest of the page.
That’s right “restore” trust. Not “maintain” or “deepen” or even why would you need to do anything about trust because why would it be an issue? But “restore”. Because it’s shot.
Wednesday, 20 October 2010
The Moral Trolley Problem - The Actual Answer
The obits column of the FT this Saturday tells me that the British philosopher Phillippa Foot died recently. She invented the "trolley problem", which goes something like this: you are standing by a set of points on a railway line and a runaway trolley is coming towards you. If it continues, it will kill five people who are trapped on the line. You can however pull the lever to work the points and divert it to the other line, where it will kill one person trapped on the line and then stop. What do you do?
Most people say they would pull the lever. You can have an argument about it and the point is, there is no right answer, what matter is the discussion in which you make explicit your moral principles. Well, maybe not. Here's a version: we're at war, you're in the army, the Five are enemy soldiers and the One is a member of your platoon. That's not even a decision. Your duty is clear. Here's another version: the One is your thirteen year-old sister and the Five are paedophiles who have been stalking her recently. I don't think that's a decision at all either. Here's another version: the Five are a bunch of bullies who have been making your son's life at school hell and the One is his best friend. Odd how that level has suddenly rusted in place isn't it? Here's another one: the One is a surgeon who is the only person who can do a life-saving operation on your wife, the Five are the medical staff who told her that there was nothing wrong with her and she should stop wasting NHS time. Okay, that lever's still rusty, but you're going to have a conscience about it. Finally, try this: the Five are blameless Philosophy professors and the One is... another blameless philosophy professor. Okay, we're back where we started.
Justice is properly blind. Morality isn't, but a lot of moral philosophers treat it as if it should be. In the trolley problem, it's not supposed to matter who the people are, but from those examples, it's clear it does matter. When Western Liberals are doing their best formal moral philosophy, they stipulate that all lives are equal and pretend that there are no evil people. When Western Liberals are making real decisions, it matters who the parties are.
Of course it does. The whole point of having relationships, agreements and understandings with people is so that you have a priority with each other. Family come first. Military colleagues after family, when on active service. Then friends and after that business associates and neighbours you trust and like. Drug dealers, child molesters, wife-beaters, serial killers and other such low-lives aren't even on the scale. They don't get any breaks. Until you're sitting in a jury, when the rules say they get treated as innocent until you're convinced otherwise. Because that's a legal process and the Law is blind.
But that's not what's wrong with trolley-ology. To explain what is, I'll give you the correct answer to the original problem. Which is this: "I would immediately pull some of the debris at the side of the railway line across the track and de-rail the trolley, thus saving everyone's lives."
I know. I cheated. Where did I get the debris from? Ummmm, ever seen a real railway line near a set of points? There's always debris. But even that's not the point: I'm not supposed to put the problem in a real-world context. I'm supposed to take one or the other option - when neither is really acceptable. Whereas in the real world, there's almost always a third way, there's always some debris - and it's thinking of the other, pragmatic, options that characterises the leader (JFK and the Blockade option especially at 1:15) and the practical person.
So the discussion that the trolley example generates is not just theoretical - which can be a good thing - it's unrealistic, which is always a bad thing. Here's a real life example from a recent trolley article. "When NICE said yes to [the drug] Herceptin, for early breast cancer, one NHS trust closed its diabetic clinic to pay for it,” said Michael Rawlins, head of NICE. “These are rotten decisions to have to make.”
Well, except the Trust should have asked me. I would have told them to keep the Diabetes clinic open. When the first Herceptin request came along, the Trust should have said "we're sorry, but we don't have the money" and that the Trust is an administrator, not a judge of who is more deserving of medical treatment. She was welcome to try other Trusts who might have the cash. I suspect a number of Trusts did that and I bet it worked.
However, cancer drugs have an odd way of usurping others. This is because the drug companies - Genentech make Herceptin - sponsor charitable foundations who in turn help Mrs X (a photogenic teacher with a family to make you sigh "Aaahhh" when you see the photographs) to "gain her rights" to treatment. Once Mrs X turns up with a strangely effective publicity campaign and a lawyer, we're no longer talking about morality, but whether a corporation with a slick PR campaign gets to decide how our taxes get spent on healthcare.
That's what I mean when I say the Trolley problems are unrealistic. Real moral problems, if they can't be solved by reference to the relationships you have with the people, have to be solved by finding the "blockade option". Trolley problems assume we have to choose between two evils and then discover that we have a limited repetoire for doing so.
Most people say they would pull the lever. You can have an argument about it and the point is, there is no right answer, what matter is the discussion in which you make explicit your moral principles. Well, maybe not. Here's a version: we're at war, you're in the army, the Five are enemy soldiers and the One is a member of your platoon. That's not even a decision. Your duty is clear. Here's another version: the One is your thirteen year-old sister and the Five are paedophiles who have been stalking her recently. I don't think that's a decision at all either. Here's another version: the Five are a bunch of bullies who have been making your son's life at school hell and the One is his best friend. Odd how that level has suddenly rusted in place isn't it? Here's another one: the One is a surgeon who is the only person who can do a life-saving operation on your wife, the Five are the medical staff who told her that there was nothing wrong with her and she should stop wasting NHS time. Okay, that lever's still rusty, but you're going to have a conscience about it. Finally, try this: the Five are blameless Philosophy professors and the One is... another blameless philosophy professor. Okay, we're back where we started.
Justice is properly blind. Morality isn't, but a lot of moral philosophers treat it as if it should be. In the trolley problem, it's not supposed to matter who the people are, but from those examples, it's clear it does matter. When Western Liberals are doing their best formal moral philosophy, they stipulate that all lives are equal and pretend that there are no evil people. When Western Liberals are making real decisions, it matters who the parties are.
Of course it does. The whole point of having relationships, agreements and understandings with people is so that you have a priority with each other. Family come first. Military colleagues after family, when on active service. Then friends and after that business associates and neighbours you trust and like. Drug dealers, child molesters, wife-beaters, serial killers and other such low-lives aren't even on the scale. They don't get any breaks. Until you're sitting in a jury, when the rules say they get treated as innocent until you're convinced otherwise. Because that's a legal process and the Law is blind.
But that's not what's wrong with trolley-ology. To explain what is, I'll give you the correct answer to the original problem. Which is this: "I would immediately pull some of the debris at the side of the railway line across the track and de-rail the trolley, thus saving everyone's lives."
I know. I cheated. Where did I get the debris from? Ummmm, ever seen a real railway line near a set of points? There's always debris. But even that's not the point: I'm not supposed to put the problem in a real-world context. I'm supposed to take one or the other option - when neither is really acceptable. Whereas in the real world, there's almost always a third way, there's always some debris - and it's thinking of the other, pragmatic, options that characterises the leader (JFK and the Blockade option especially at 1:15) and the practical person.
So the discussion that the trolley example generates is not just theoretical - which can be a good thing - it's unrealistic, which is always a bad thing. Here's a real life example from a recent trolley article. "When NICE said yes to [the drug] Herceptin, for early breast cancer, one NHS trust closed its diabetic clinic to pay for it,” said Michael Rawlins, head of NICE. “These are rotten decisions to have to make.”
Well, except the Trust should have asked me. I would have told them to keep the Diabetes clinic open. When the first Herceptin request came along, the Trust should have said "we're sorry, but we don't have the money" and that the Trust is an administrator, not a judge of who is more deserving of medical treatment. She was welcome to try other Trusts who might have the cash. I suspect a number of Trusts did that and I bet it worked.
However, cancer drugs have an odd way of usurping others. This is because the drug companies - Genentech make Herceptin - sponsor charitable foundations who in turn help Mrs X (a photogenic teacher with a family to make you sigh "Aaahhh" when you see the photographs) to "gain her rights" to treatment. Once Mrs X turns up with a strangely effective publicity campaign and a lawyer, we're no longer talking about morality, but whether a corporation with a slick PR campaign gets to decide how our taxes get spent on healthcare.
That's what I mean when I say the Trolley problems are unrealistic. Real moral problems, if they can't be solved by reference to the relationships you have with the people, have to be solved by finding the "blockade option". Trolley problems assume we have to choose between two evils and then discover that we have a limited repetoire for doing so.
Monday, 18 October 2010
In The Upper Room - Sadler's Wells
Another trip to Sadler's Wells, this time to see the Birmingham Royal Ballet in a three-part programme with very long intervals (I didn't know about the long intervals). The first piece was Kenneth MacMillan's Concerto, which was pretty and pointless in that strange way that modern dance can be. The second was Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, which was fun and sexy. But I was still waiting to be amazed.
The third piece. Twyla Tharp's In The Upper Room. Music by Philip Glass. I'm wondering. This could be painful. It starts.
In three minutes, I'm entranced and it's clear we're in the presence of The Real Thing. The Birmingham dancers were fluid, loose-limbed and scattered around the beat, which gave the whole thing an informal feel - it's clearly notated to an inch of its life, but the dancers made it seem like they were making bits of it up. And I like that improvisatory feel.
The way the dancers seem to solidify as they come through the smoke is slightly magical and the finale will make you shout "Yeah!" If you've ever sat through an evening of rigorous modern dance, thinking "that's a really cool trick, and they are technically brilliant, but where's the fun?", here's your antidote.
The third piece. Twyla Tharp's In The Upper Room. Music by Philip Glass. I'm wondering. This could be painful. It starts.
In three minutes, I'm entranced and it's clear we're in the presence of The Real Thing. The Birmingham dancers were fluid, loose-limbed and scattered around the beat, which gave the whole thing an informal feel - it's clearly notated to an inch of its life, but the dancers made it seem like they were making bits of it up. And I like that improvisatory feel.
The way the dancers seem to solidify as they come through the smoke is slightly magical and the finale will make you shout "Yeah!" If you've ever sat through an evening of rigorous modern dance, thinking "that's a really cool trick, and they are technically brilliant, but where's the fun?", here's your antidote.
Friday, 15 October 2010
Don't Play Interview Battleships
Your skills are there somewhere. Let's see...nope, nothing on A4: how is your department organised? Let's try B7: what do you do in your current job? Maybe H6: tell me about a time you had to respond to a client request quickly. And on it goes. A bunch of questions that make sense if you are already doing what they want you to do for them, but not otherwise.
They don't want to ask straight out if you can do X, Y and Z, because that makes it too easy for you to say Yes with whatever varying degree of truth is involved. To get round that they would have to give you a test, and of course no-one who works there would pass the test. If you did, the chances are you would realise you were working below your abilities in about, oh, a week. And they know that. Tests are fine for commodity code-cutters or people who have to know the official regulations around their jobs, but not for companies hiring non-cookie-cutter jobs.
So they shoot random questions at you and see if you mention any magic words. Recently I was so puzzled by one interviewer's repeated questioning about "what I did" at The Bank, that I eventually cam straight out and said "you want to know what I can do?" And then told him. He fired a quick test at me, which I passed (because I am actually that good). From then on the interview got back on track.
I vowed that the next time someone asked "what do you do at The Bank" I would say "not much of any real interest to you, or to me, which is why I want to work with you. What's interesting to you is that I've picked up skills in (insert relevant stuff here) and some experience of (insert more relevant stuff here). But how I use them at The Bank is more or less irrelevant to what I can do for you." Then go on to talk about their business and my understanding of it.
They don't want to ask straight out if you can do X, Y and Z, because that makes it too easy for you to say Yes with whatever varying degree of truth is involved. To get round that they would have to give you a test, and of course no-one who works there would pass the test. If you did, the chances are you would realise you were working below your abilities in about, oh, a week. And they know that. Tests are fine for commodity code-cutters or people who have to know the official regulations around their jobs, but not for companies hiring non-cookie-cutter jobs.
So they shoot random questions at you and see if you mention any magic words. Recently I was so puzzled by one interviewer's repeated questioning about "what I did" at The Bank, that I eventually cam straight out and said "you want to know what I can do?" And then told him. He fired a quick test at me, which I passed (because I am actually that good). From then on the interview got back on track.
I vowed that the next time someone asked "what do you do at The Bank" I would say "not much of any real interest to you, or to me, which is why I want to work with you. What's interesting to you is that I've picked up skills in (insert relevant stuff here) and some experience of (insert more relevant stuff here). But how I use them at The Bank is more or less irrelevant to what I can do for you." Then go on to talk about their business and my understanding of it.
Wednesday, 13 October 2010
High Dependency Unit
There are times when I wonder if I really still like music or if it's just a habit. Do I like stuff because I think I should? Given my recent immersion in the symphonic works of Bruckner, Prokofiev and Shostakovich for educational purposes, you can see how I might have that doubt.
So I was having my pass-the-time-between-work-and-a-movie coffee and cake in the Milkbar on Bateman Street, where they play a steady stream of what seem to be New Zealand bands at a volume so you can't ignore it or hear the conversation at the next table. I was tapping away on my Asus and started to think "that's a good guitar sound"... tap, tap, stare, think, tap, tap "that's a really good guitar sound", tap, tap, think, tap "what is this?" So I asked the guys at the counter, who told me it was an New Zealand band called High Dependency Unit and the album was called Metamathics. Which is not on amazon.co.uk, but two others are and I've downloaded both onto my Sony Ericsson C510. When that happens, I know I still really like music and my ear hasn't gone soft.
One of those tracks - Masd - is one of the most beautiful sounds I've heard all year. Sadly it's not available on You Tube, but this is, and you should give it a listen.
So I was having my pass-the-time-between-work-and-a-movie coffee and cake in the Milkbar on Bateman Street, where they play a steady stream of what seem to be New Zealand bands at a volume so you can't ignore it or hear the conversation at the next table. I was tapping away on my Asus and started to think "that's a good guitar sound"... tap, tap, stare, think, tap, tap "that's a really good guitar sound", tap, tap, think, tap "what is this?" So I asked the guys at the counter, who told me it was an New Zealand band called High Dependency Unit and the album was called Metamathics. Which is not on amazon.co.uk, but two others are and I've downloaded both onto my Sony Ericsson C510. When that happens, I know I still really like music and my ear hasn't gone soft.
One of those tracks - Masd - is one of the most beautiful sounds I've heard all year. Sadly it's not available on You Tube, but this is, and you should give it a listen.
Monday, 11 October 2010
The Pursuit of Happiness - Or What The Founding Fathers Really Meant
As every schoolboy knows, the Declaration of Independence says amongst other things that "we hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness".
As every schoolboy has been told by his tutors and millions of subsequent mavens, "the pursuit of happiness" is a siren calling to wreck the soul on the rocks of futility, an impossible dream and an occupation as futile as finding the end of the rainbow. Happiness, in the Western World, is to be pursued, surely, but is unattainable. Except for the simple-minded, simple-souled or through some adjustments of the soul that would tax the virtue of a Tibetan monk.
Unless you're one of the Founding Fathers. For them the word "pursuit" did not commonly mean '"chase after" but rather "occupation", "work", "calling" or at worst "pastime". They didn't mean "pursuit of happiness" as in the chase after it, but the actual practice, work, occupation or vocation of happiness: doing stuff that you like to do and not wanting to be doing something else at the same time.
Happiness wasn't a state of mind for them, but a mode of engaging in activities. The right they had in mind was not to some kind of chemical or spiritual high or snatched moments of contentment and bliss, but to work and live in a manner that was such that you want to live like that and aren't always haunted by the idea that you could live better. That's what happiness is, and that's what the occupation, work or "pursuit" of it would be. Not to be blissed-out, not to be vacantly un-discontent, but to be actively engaged in the world in a manner that was satisfying to you. And not to be haunted by nightmares of better.
That's an idea of happiness that only a rich man could have, or a philosopher. The rest of the world in 1776, ground down by poverty and bad weather, saw happiness as the absence of misery, hunger, ruined crops, taxes and anything else that made their lives harder. Poor men conceive of happiness as the absence of everything that makes their live hard. Happiness is to be achieved by the acquisition of tools and goods that make life easier or more productive, that shelter from the storm, ease the pain or bring a moment of release and gladness. And that's the stuff that gets chased after, because you can chase after highs and try to cheat the lows for ever and never succeed. The Founding Fathers were not creating a right of existence for John Deere Corp (agricultural machinery) or for Jack Daniels (easing the pain). They were creating a right for you to pass your life productively and in accordance with your best skills and nature.
Just like they did.
As every schoolboy has been told by his tutors and millions of subsequent mavens, "the pursuit of happiness" is a siren calling to wreck the soul on the rocks of futility, an impossible dream and an occupation as futile as finding the end of the rainbow. Happiness, in the Western World, is to be pursued, surely, but is unattainable. Except for the simple-minded, simple-souled or through some adjustments of the soul that would tax the virtue of a Tibetan monk.
Unless you're one of the Founding Fathers. For them the word "pursuit" did not commonly mean '"chase after" but rather "occupation", "work", "calling" or at worst "pastime". They didn't mean "pursuit of happiness" as in the chase after it, but the actual practice, work, occupation or vocation of happiness: doing stuff that you like to do and not wanting to be doing something else at the same time.
Happiness wasn't a state of mind for them, but a mode of engaging in activities. The right they had in mind was not to some kind of chemical or spiritual high or snatched moments of contentment and bliss, but to work and live in a manner that was such that you want to live like that and aren't always haunted by the idea that you could live better. That's what happiness is, and that's what the occupation, work or "pursuit" of it would be. Not to be blissed-out, not to be vacantly un-discontent, but to be actively engaged in the world in a manner that was satisfying to you. And not to be haunted by nightmares of better.
That's an idea of happiness that only a rich man could have, or a philosopher. The rest of the world in 1776, ground down by poverty and bad weather, saw happiness as the absence of misery, hunger, ruined crops, taxes and anything else that made their lives harder. Poor men conceive of happiness as the absence of everything that makes their live hard. Happiness is to be achieved by the acquisition of tools and goods that make life easier or more productive, that shelter from the storm, ease the pain or bring a moment of release and gladness. And that's the stuff that gets chased after, because you can chase after highs and try to cheat the lows for ever and never succeed. The Founding Fathers were not creating a right of existence for John Deere Corp (agricultural machinery) or for Jack Daniels (easing the pain). They were creating a right for you to pass your life productively and in accordance with your best skills and nature.
Just like they did.
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