For the sake of appearances and to keep a healthy air of mystique about things we are going to call today’s correspondent Alex, Martin. ‘Martin’ wrote to me to ask if I might not like coming to work for him in Colchester. He noted, in the email, that Manchester (where I live) is a very long way from Colchester and that I might be reluctant to leave everything (my Kodak three-in-one printer) behind just for a job selling Applicant Trackers.
In the event of my not wanting to then at least I should take heart from the fact that ‘there are people out there who encourage personality within business’
Nice to know!
‘As well as encouraging absolute client focus’ he added.
During our correspondence ‘absolute’ escalated into ‘unflinching’ client focus.
Unflinching client focus presumably being the species of client focus whereby you’re more intimate with your client’s needs than he himself is thanks to your conducting 24 hour in-person surveillance of your client from the bottom of his garden. A focus so extraordinary that it is only in the taxi away from your 14:00 face-to-face that he realises – your client, nestled into the backseat of the cab – realises that what you palpably smelled of during the meeting was his garden and his wife – too consumed, in the 14:00, by the nuclear intensity of your gaze and the can of WD40, giftwrapped, that you gave him to quiet the squeak of his bedroom door, to quite place the smell.
Aside from Martin’s questionable choice of words he was very nice and kind.
Everyone is.
Remember Danniii?
She had spunk.
Anyway those days are gone: I visited Martin’s site to take a look at what he sold – an applicant tracker, which is a curious piece of software used by recruiters everywhere -and I emailed him.
Colchester is a long way away.
One of the many functions of the twin-front-ended applicant tracker (alongside cataloguing CVs and the auto-dissemination of job adverts and rejection letters) is the automatic screening of applications like the applications I write.
Martin, it seems, has a healthy sense of irony.
Curriculum Vitae 
#1 by abercrombie on December 16, 2011 - 9:27 am
This is to sail it?
#2 by curriculum vitiate on December 16, 2011 - 10:03 am
Swim, if I’m not mistaken.
#3 by Ralf TheStatesman on December 16, 2011 - 12:43 pm
If you are unable to find a job, why don’t you get out and do something useful instead of sitting inside trolling these people at recruitment agencies.? You could, for example, do some volunteering in your local community. Everyone knows recruitment agents are full of shit, their job postings are bollocks and their profession is morally bankrupt; you are not exposing anything new. Go help and elderly person with their shopping instead of all this intellectual masturbation on here.
#4 by Neringa on December 17, 2011 - 6:06 pm
love it.
#5 by J on December 21, 2011 - 6:46 pm
As a current resident of Colchester, I feel obligated to say: “avoid at all cost!”
Despite it’s geographical size, the actual town centre is exceptionally small, and aside from the local park (a small field mostly encompassing a hill slope), it’s for all intents and purposes a village. Not one of those nice villages you see on tv, where everyone’s friendly, there’s lots of excitement and fulfilment, but instead a grey, bleak, village, that has about as much life to it, as your Pigeon friend from the last post.
I’m hoping to move away in the next few weeks, as there’s no work here, in addition to the above reasons.
#6 by Kitsy on December 23, 2011 - 2:21 pm
It is the last day of mind numbing drudgery before that great holiday i like to call turkey-day and I have passed my morning with a birthday induced hangover reading every article in this blog. Thanks to a small mention on Have I got News for You and a complete unwillingness to work on christmas-eve-eve I googled your CV thingy this morning and have since pretended that I am coming down with a cough to hide the obvious outbursts of laughing.
I just wanted to thank you for this little gem in the drudgery that is going to work. I’m off to show off my versatility by drinking chritmas champagne with the other drones in my company… So cheers for that
p.s you have also inspired me to start giving cigarettes to tramps.
#7 by L on January 12, 2012 - 2:15 pm
Thought I’d come and say ‘Hi’ as a fellow person who has mooched about the Women’s Organisation (Liverpool branch). It’s curious because there’s a light-haired man in his twenties who wanders around the building with a key fob opening doors and engaging in conversations there as well – maybe an essential requirement for TWO?
In fact, maybe an essential for any office environment!
I’m not sure he has to clean the toilets, though, maybe you should complain about that bit. He seems to get away with being the holder of the key-fob and fixer-of-random-yet-important-things. Although, my brief encounters with this person may have only scratched the surface of his role.
(PS your CV really is doing the rounds! )
#8 by LuisQ on January 12, 2012 - 10:46 pm
WHERE ARE YOU!??!?!?!
#9 by Hal on January 31, 2012 - 9:00 am
Been a while since your last update. I presume you now have a job or are living on the street. I hear its tough there 😦 Also wheres my wine 😛
#10 by Zoe on February 9, 2012 - 10:37 am
Hey, where are you? I need an update
#11 by Steph on July 30, 2012 - 8:38 pm
Google was, obviously, only trying to help you remain as far away from Birmingham as possible throughout your commute. I’m not from the UK (thank god) although I have family somewhere in Yorkshire. I lived in Scotland for a bit, near Glasgow, in a “lovely” and …. In a lovely place called East Kilbride……My mum’s an Australian. I’ll just assume I don’t need to make comment on any of those statements. Unsure even why I have told you. Something about your humor makes me open right up, like a Nottingham Catchfly in the night.
#12 by rob on April 27, 2013 - 9:02 am
hey bud,
what’s up with you? got a job?