the agents

Every week I receive telephone calls from employment agencies, who, presumably, have heard about our 50% staff turnover. They are very keen to sell me their highly competent and impressively qualified personnel, and I have to resort to being quite rude, to get rid of them. I know, you can't imagine that, can you?

On Friday, it all changed: now I need them on my side [in a different area, luckily].

I predicted that the four interviews would go something like this: not very good at the first one [too early in the morning]; pretty good at the second; red hot at the third; and utterly crap at the last.

I was so right. The first interviewer reminded me of a girl I used to work with, who I didn't care for much. She in mind a particular vacancy in Basingstoke, as a sort of general trouble-shooter; but by the end of the interview she didn't feel that I had enough of a Quality Management background. Obviously I hadn't communicated with her at all well.

The second agent was older, and she told me all about how busy she was, and how she could do with some sort of Quality Management System, but didn't have the time to do anything about it. I told her how reasonable my rates were.

The third agent has just called me, to say that they might want to offer me a short-term contract implementing a Quality Management System in their own offices.

The fourth one probably couldn't spell QMS; but he did give me a big wink instead of shaking my hand.