Game of the Name – part deux
Alright – you’ve forced Guru into it. It began as nothing more than a mid-afternoon doodle. But the reader reaction to Guru’s analysis of the most common names of HR directors has been nothing short of astonishing.
Like a snowball gathering pace, this story looks certain to overtake HR offshoring and the CIPD membership upgrade row as the scoop of the year.
You’ll remember that Michael/Mike and Susan/Sue topped the league table of the forenames of the most senior executives in HR. And you may also remember that Guru made a casual promise to analyse HR director surnames to complete the picture. Well, it seems you cannot wait. You want it now. And who is Guru to disappoint his eager disciples?
Here are the 12 most ‘popular’ surnames in senior HR circles:
1 Smith
2= Robinson
2= Williams
4 Brown
5 Evans
6 White
7 Jones
8= Jackson
8= Turner
10= Campbell
10= Fitzgerald
10= Griffiths
Guru can also now reveal the most suitable HR director in the land. Stand up Mike Smith, director of HR at Yorkshire Water. You top both forename and surname league tables and are the very model of a modern HR professional – by moniker, at least. Susie Robinson, HR director (EMEA) at Exel comes a noteworthy second.
Flush out the firm’s genetic imbeciles
Following on from Guru’s spit-and-follicles meanderings last week in the latest chapter on the Amazing (day of) Grace campaign, one disciple dedicated whole minutes of his day to contemÂplating the implications of such a harvest of genetic material – particularly the bit about the cost of isolating idiots being £100,000:
Dear Guru,
Having read your article, I wrestled long and hard on this issue, at the expense of even more interesting stuff such as absence control statistics. I feel I should now pass on my solution to mankind. Why not announce to all staff that Friday will be a Genes Day? Anyone stupid enough to turn up in ripped denim will thus be flushed out and we save £100 grand in the process. Brilliant or what?
Disciple Steve
Never wanting to discourage disciples, Guru nonetheless has to point out that for such a simple plan to work, it would have to be announced via a loudspeaker system, as to assume that some of the corporate idiots of this world can read is a leap too far.
Sporting success is written in the stars
Talking of leaps, it turns out that if you were born in March, April, May or June, your chances of being good at the triple jump are next to zero. If you were born in July or August, you’ve even less chance of becoming an elite sports star.
Statistics from the Sportnation think-tank, headed by former world athletics champion Steve Cram, revealed the shock statistic that 73% of all elite footballers at English soccer academies in 2004 were born between September and February.
It turns out this corresponds with the time when teams are picked for major sports in schools. So if you were too young or too small to shine in the early terms at school, you would probably have given up sport by the time you hit age 14.
Cram uses as an example Liverpool and England footie star ‘Little’ Stevie Gerrard (as he used to be known), who was born in May, and couldn’t break into the national sporting academy due to a lack of stature.
According to Cram, this could account for the dismal showing of England sides in world competitions, as 30,000 naturally talented potential sports stars are being ignored every year.
Of course, using the England vice-captain as an example of someone being held back in sport is somewhat questionable logic. But Guru will take Cram at his word.
However, lack of physical development could also apply to the brain, and Guru therefore sees no reason why this logic should not apply to other occupations, including HR, the legal profession, doctors, nurses etc.
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This would leave a big half-year-sized hole in the working population, as all those born under the star signs of Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer and Leo, or three-quarters of them at least, would be languishing in the dole queue, leaning on a shovel, or holding down a middle-tier management role, doing pretty much nothing.
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