A friend who works for a large logistics organisation best known by its three initials has sent me tantalising snippets from a job advertisement it has placed in a trade magazine.
The post, for a "Strategy Specialist, External Affairs", which sounds very hush-hush to me, must be very important, as the ad runs to 342 words, I am told, which must set some sort of record for prolixity.
The body of the ad, it must be said, provides a pretty good profile – not, however, of the kind of person the company is seeking, but of the person who devised and wrote it.
The "Requirements" section (it's followed by a "Responsibilities" section) raises the immediate suspicion that this is the work of a“seagull manager” , AKA a consultant. For it is one mark, indeed, the defining mark, of a consultant to construct an imaginary world in which he is indispensable, rather than to inhabit the real one from which everyone else wishes him well rid.
Thus, the first quality sought in the candidate is five years' experience in "highly analytical jobs (qualitative and quantitative), e.g. management consultancy", as if they existed nowhere else.
It's a bright start but it gets even better. The candidate must have the "ability to interact with C-suited executives". Now, I have to admit that this one threw me. Then, I realised that what our feathered friend meant to write was "C-suite", as in the ridiculous piece ofself-aggrandising gobbledegook
Which leaves us with our final requirement. He or she must be a "self-starter" (so don't bother to apply if you get someone else to start you up in the morning) with "the ability to flourish in a team-based but, unstructured environment".
There's so much to like here that one doesn't know where to self-start. The bizarre punctuation suggests a consultant who has spent too much of his life inventing acronyms like CIO and MAE, not to mention "C-Suited", while the "unstructured environment" just has to be the niftiest way ever found for saying "Avoid us like the plague - we make it up as we go along".
The post, for a "Strategy Specialist, External Affairs", which sounds very hush-hush to me, must be very important, as the ad runs to 342 words, I am told, which must set some sort of record for prolixity.
The body of the ad, it must be said, provides a pretty good profile – not, however, of the kind of person the company is seeking, but of the person who devised and wrote it.
The "Requirements" section (it's followed by a "Responsibilities" section) raises the immediate suspicion that this is the work of a
Thus, the first quality sought in the candidate is five years' experience in "highly analytical jobs (qualitative and quantitative), e.g. management consultancy", as if they existed nowhere else.
It's a bright start but it gets even better. The candidate must have the "ability to interact with C-suited executives". Now, I have to admit that this one threw me. Then, I realised that what our feathered friend meant to write was "C-suite", as in the ridiculous piece of
Which leaves us with our final requirement. He or she must be a "self-starter" (so don't bother to apply if you get someone else to start you up in the morning) with "the ability to flourish in a team-based but, unstructured environment".
There's so much to like here that one doesn't know where to self-start. The bizarre punctuation suggests a consultant who has spent too much of his life inventing acronyms like CIO and MAE, not to mention "C-Suited", while the "unstructured environment" just has to be the niftiest way ever found for saying "Avoid us like the plague - we make it up as we go along".
Truly a multinational logistics megacorp with Hong Kong characteristics.
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