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December 2009 - Guru Blog

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  • CV intercept leads to home truths

    Disciple Charlotte writes about a recent CV she received... The CV came to us via an employment agency so had severely slipped through the net on every level. The candidate in question had listed their responsibilities and as I read down saw 'sitting around surfing the net, texting his mates and calling his colleagues gay'. Turns out when I...
    Published 21 Dec 2009 9:34 AM by Guru
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  • Rock on! It's a pensions Battle of the Bands

    Work in the pensions industry? Play an instrument? Then you and your colleagues could enter Pensions Rocks - a battle of the bands all in the name of charity. No, this is not some kind of sick joke. This competition actually exists and is set to take place in London on 13 May 2010. Reserve the date in your diary now! A quick glance at the entry requirements...
  • Cleaners worth more than bankers

    A somewhat unbelievable headline, yes, but as City bankers plan how to spend their hefty Christmas bonuses, a report from the New Economics Foundation has calculated the true value to society of different jobs. The research says hospital cleaners create £10 of value for every £1 they are paid. However, bankers are a drain on the country because of the...
    Published 17 Dec 2009 8:39 AM by Guru
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  • Top 10 three letter acronyms

    A survey of company directors by communications consultancy the Aziz Corporation reveals a state of bewilderment with the number of acronyms thrown about. Some even said they had tried to ban acronyms in their organisation. The firm has named and shamed some of the worst acronyms heard being uttered. Guru is unsure how genuine some of these are - but...
    Published 16 Dec 2009 9:16 AM by Guru
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  • Christmas debt timebomb unwrapped

    Here's a little factoid to depress your colleagues at the office Christmas party. In a couple of hours - the time it takes to polish off turkey, all the trimmings and Christmas pudding - you and all UK taxpayers will be £72m worse off. The New Party - an odd collective of people that have formed their own political party - has calculated what it...
    Published 15 Dec 2009 8:46 AM by Guru
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  • HR hunks and hotties - photo gallery

    Enthusiasm for Guru's quest to find the UK's sexiest HR professional is picking up. Yours Truly has been receiving lots of entries for the hunks and hotties competition - launched in response to Farmers Weekly's hunt for Britain's sexiest farmers. Disciples can now view a photo gallery of HR hunks and hotties on Personnel Today's...
    Published 14 Dec 2009 12:32 PM by Guru
  • Video games top poll for pulling a sickie

    Depressing research arrives via Mrs Guru's favourite discount voucher codes website MyVoucherCodes.co.uk. They polled 1,920 employees in the UK and revealed that the number one reason men skive off work is to spend some quality time with their games console. A quarter of the men that admitted to pulling sickies to stay at home and play videogames...
  • Plain English Campaign hands out jargon awards

    We in HR love our jargon, probably more so than most professions. But even HR would struggle to beat some of these baffling and bad examples of official documents and communication from government departments, councils and the private sector. The Plain English Campaign has handed out its annual Golden Bull Awards to the worst offenders. Some of these...
    Published 9 Dec 2009 8:45 AM by Guru
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  • 18 January - most depressing day of next year

    We've not even got past Christmas and New Year yet, but the most depressing day of 2010 has already been identified. Something to look forward to then... Picture the scene: It's January, Christmas is a distant memory, the credit card bills are hitting the doormat, the days are shorter, you've broken all your New Year's resolutions already...
  • Job of the week! Lapdancing research officer

    The School of Sociology and Social Policy at Leeds University has advertised a vacancy for a research officer to look into "the rise and regulation of lap dancing and the place of sexual labour and consumption in the night time economy". The ad states that prior experience of conducting research in the female sex industry is essential and...
    Published 3 Dec 2009 8:41 AM by Guru
  • Industrial action - elf-style

    In a bah humbug move, the authorities have shut down Santa's Grotto. Not the Santa's Grotto, you understand, but the no doubt somewhat grottier (ho, ho, ho) version lurking in the carpark in the Knocknagoney branch of Tesco . That's in Belfast, my cousin Seamus O'Guru reliably informs me. Why the lack of yuletide spirit? Guru hears that...
  • Want a baby? Then work in the public sector

    A curious report from boffins at the Economic and Social Research Council which basically concludes that if you want to get impregnated then you should work in the public sector. The study, which examined patterns of employment and childbearing decisions for couples over a number of years, found that the decision to have children was intricately bound...
  • Yuppies replaced by Scamps

    Yuppies make way; a new phenomenon is taking over the workplace in the form of Scamps. Yes, according to our friends at Office Angels, young upwardly mobile professionals are being overtaken by Scamps - workers swapping careers and money for passport stamps. The company has invented this acronym to describe the attributes of Gen Y employees who are...
    Published 1 Dec 2009 8:30 AM by Guru