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• When is an engineer not an engineer?

  Kudos to Dick Olver, boss of BAE Systems, who said yesterday that Britain was belittling the job title 'engineer' by applying it to photocopier repairmen and gas fitters. Olver claimed about two million workers have the job title of engineer, despite having limited technical qualifications. Professional engineers should "take ownership... Posted Mar 02 2010, 09:45 AM by Guru Filed under: jobs, engineer, job title

• The highest job in the world (well, Wales)

  Disciples will remember the so-called 'best jobs in the world' advertised last year: tropical island caretaker, theme park reviewer, lap dance club researcher. Now there's a variation on the theme: the highest job. There is a downside, however - it's based in Wales. The Snowdon Mountain Railway Company is looking for a manager for the... Posted Feb 11 2010, 03:40 PM by Guru Filed under: jobs, science, recruitment, job, wales, railway, manager, cafe

• Electric man-kets offered by hotel chain

  No, it's not 1 April - hotel chain Holiday Inn is employing human bed warmers to help guests get a good night's sleep. The walking electric blankets are dressed in special (creepy) all-in-one sleeper suits and are sent to warm the beds of guests staying at the Holiday Inn before they get under the covers. The idea of a total stranger getting... Posted Jan 18 2010, 03:39 PM by Guru Filed under: jobs, hotel, sleep, Holiday Inn, bed warmer

• 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... Posted Dec 21 2009, 09:34 AM by Guru Filed under: jobs, candidate, CV

• 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... Posted Dec 17 2009, 08:39 AM by Guru Filed under: jobs, workers, pay, cleaners, bankers

• 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... Posted Dec 01 2009, 08:30 AM by Guru Filed under: jobs, work, office angels, careers, yuppies

• One man's rant on media sales recruitment

  Someone under the pseudonym Mr City Man posted this comment on a career blog. It never actually got published but Guru can now reveal its full glory to disciples as it provides a window into the world of one young man trying to get a job in media sales. Potentially libellous and defamatory comments have been edited out. Spelling mistakes and grammatical... Posted Nov 23 2009, 08:41 AM by Guru Filed under: jobs, recruitment, job, media, interview

• Best job in the world (yes, another one)

  How many 'best jobs in the world' can you have? By definition, surely only one? However, a new 'best job' seem to come along every few weeks, ever since the original 'best job in the world' - the caretaker of an Australian tropical island - was filled by the slappable Brit Ben Southall back in May. The latest job was the hunt... Posted Oct 06 2009, 10:21 AM by Guru Filed under: jobs, global, job, tourism, orlando, smile

• Wookey Hole witch gets new job offer

  Disciples will recall that earlier this summer former estate agent Carole Bohanan beat 300 cackling crones to be the new Wookey Hole witch and a £50,000 pro-rata salary. Carole gave up her job as an estate agent in Shepton Mallet, Somerset to take up the post, which only actually requires her witchy services for 10 weeks of the year - so she's actually... Posted Aug 18 2009, 09:07 AM by Guru Filed under: jobs, witch, Wookey Hole

• The New Rules of Work (apparently)

  Guru has just discovered his new favourite book The New Rules of Work (PDF) by Mike Dauncey, founder of jobs board Tiptopjob.com. The book is described as an "un-pc and frank guide to the modern day world of work". According to Dauncey, the 'new rules' are necessary because the recession has created a seismic shift in the jobs market... Posted Jul 30 2009, 12:48 PM by Guru Filed under: recession, jobs, work, recruitment, employers, Jobseekers

• Wookey Hole witch appointed

  Common sense has prevailed and bosses at the Wookey Hole Caves tourist site in Somerset have appointed a female witch. It's ironic that the new witch has been announced on the same day as the Women and Work Commission criticised the government for failing to tackle gender stereotypes in career advice. Is the job of 'witch' a gender stereotype... Posted Jul 29 2009, 12:00 PM by Guru Filed under: jobs, equality, job, witch, Wookey Hole, gender

• Facesquatting - a new way to make yourself unemployable

  This week's new word is the deeply unpleasant 'Facesquatting' (a term Guru advises not Googling in an open plan office), coined as a result of timewasters' favourite Facebook 's decision to let users give their profile pages simple addresses. Most users simply wanted to bag their own name - facebook.com/joebloggs for example. But... Posted Jun 16 2009, 11:26 AM by Guru Filed under: jobs, internet, Facebook, social network

• One man, one year, 365 jobs

  Jamie Dodd, a 30-year-old unemployed father of three from Lancashire, begins today what will be a very strange year for him. Jamie is attempting a record breaking challenge - to work 365 different jobs, one each day, for an entire year. Project-365 kicks off today and, unlike the rest of the malingering UK workforce, Jamie will not take any sickies... Posted Jun 01 2009, 09:00 AM by Guru Filed under: jobs, Jamie Dodd, project 365

• Pig farming - a career for the hard of hearing?

  Guru - like so many innocent observers - has long laboured under the opinion that farming is a gentle profession, peopled by chubby rosy-cheeked types in cords and Barbours. Yet it appears that some of these brave types are facing, day in, day out, a hitherto unknown peril - the noisy pig. According to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), a bunch... Posted May 26 2009, 12:00 PM by Guru Filed under: jobs, health and safety, Farming, HSE, danger, Health and Safety Executive

• Daily Mail council non-jobs article is non-story

  Guru's favourite read, the Daily Mail, ran what must be one of it's perfect stories earlier this week. All the story needed was for immigrants to be responsible for causing cancer then it had struck tabloid gold. As it was, the article was about council 'non-jobs', which the paper and its friend the Taxpayers Alliance (who both basically... Posted Apr 24 2009, 12:01 PM by Guru Filed under: jobs, council, Daily Mail, taxpayers' alliance