How Hard Can it be?

No, not that, although for a man of my age, I can be quite proud... No, what I really meant is how hard can it be to recruit a suitable member of staff? Within my team we've had a position which has been filled by temps since 2003. This was since the last restructure when it was deemed unnecessary for us to have this post, and the person filling it was moved to a different section. From then on we've had a succession of temps filling the role, which of course doesn't really exist, but now does again under the latest restructure. Clear as mud right? Anyhoo - the quality of temps has covered all parts of the scale, from excellent to downright awful. I sometimes wondered if the agency were dragging passing ne'er do wells from the street and despatching them to us, they were that bad. So - we finally get to appoint someone to the post. The temp we currently have is excellent, punctual, accurate and a good laugh to boot. Unfortunately, being a public sector employer we cannot just appoint him to the post, but must go through the process of advertising and interviewing for the role. So over the weekend I've had the delight of reviewing the application forms and scoring them to short list for interview. Blimey there are some strange people out there. They don't meet the basic essential criteria, but have applied anyway. One person didn't even fill in the form, just stapled a copy of their CV to it! I'm not expecting to get people's life stories on the forms, but some seem willing to share their inner thoughts regardless. Others must think that putting almost nothing on the form will lend them an air of mystery and mean that we need to see them in person. Wrong again. Still sorting this out is a nice way to ease myself into the week after the Bank Holiday, and it means I can get the auditors to hassle somebody else for a few hours!