guru

In a month when London
Underground services have been crippled by strike action, at least the Tube’s
HR team has managed to come up with innovative ways to recruit.

More than 1,400 Cosmopolitan
readers have applied to become London Tube-train drivers. London Underground
described the response to its single advert in this month’s issue as
"exceptional".

Successful applicants will have
to get out of bed for regular 4.45am starts but the £27,650 salary and up to
eight weeks’ holiday will sweeten the job.

Cosmo’s editor Lorraine Candy
said the interest shown demonstrates that young women are not bound by
traditional career patterns. She said, "I don’t think the job is boring or
unsexy and I’m sure the passengers couldn’t care less whether the train is being
driven by a man or a woman ñ as long as it’s on time."

Women make up only 3 per cent
of London Underground’s driving staff.

Almost taken in
by the blarney

Last week, Guru made a flying
visit to Dublin to attend a conference on internal communication. While Guru
hardly had time to sup a pint of the black stuff, there was time to be
impressed by a presentation by the head of HR at RyanAir, Eddie Wilson. He
expounded a low-cost, no-nonsense approach to HR which was significantly
contributing to the company’s financial success.

Wilson claims his staff are
highly motivated by being shareholders in the company and is scornful about the
idea of spending money on expensive internal communication strategies (News, 6
February).

Wilson extolled the virtues of
saving money at all costs. This attitude extends even to stationery, with
Wilson explaining that staff had to provide their own pens. Guru was falling
for this bottom-line approach up to when the time came to board the RyanAir
plane home. The plane was delayed for more than an hour. 

Bullied baldy’s
boss bites back

Guru would like to applaud the
Post Office for standing up for the folically challenged. It cut off the postal
supply to a meat firm in Brighton because its employees persistently teased the
postman, Alan, for being bald. Every morning Alan would arrive at the meat
distribution company to be greeted by shouts of "baldy" and
"slaphead".

When he asked his employer to
intervene, the Post Office rang the owner and demanded an end to it. Guru’s
support here is in no way influenced by one’s own "chrome dome", and
is only because Guru supports any and all moves to eradicate bullying at work.

Ikea flushed
with success of job adverts

Guru has heard and disseminated
a lot of toilet humour over the years, but didn’t realise there was also toilet
recruitment. Guru is quick to stress that this has nothing to do with
"moments of madness" on Clapham Common, but is a new staff
recruitment technique at Ikea. The company recently attracted 60 applicants by
scrawling job adverts in restaurant toilets in Stockholm. "The number of
people who responded was 20 per cent higher than when we pay for ads in the
usual way, which is quite amazing," claimed a company spokesperson.