Grad Fair Fun

For three years now I've been heading out to the various graduate recruitment fairs in the autumn to chat to students about where they should work: specifically, at Microsoft - or this year, Thomson Reuters. It's amazing how easily my loyalty can be bought with a bunch of cash (take note people).

I love these things - it's fun chatting to some of the bright students but it's a lot more amusing to watch the dumb ones come up and make fools of themselves in front of the people who'll be recruiting them in future. Here's a few of this year's classic quotes:


"I'm at University but I don't really like it so I'm thinking of something else, can you recommend anything?"
Yes, not going to a graduate recruitment fair.

"Are you guys French?" No. "Oh so you're posh then?" ...

"I've got a lot of experience as a bakery assistant, and doing cake decorating" I don't think we're the right company for you "No no...look at my CV [two pages of catering qualifications]".

"I've got a psychology degree."


It's also amusing to see different companies' approach to recruitment. Aldi go down the subtle route, with an Audi A4 parked in the middle of the fair and "£40k starting salary" - I think it would be a bit redundant to ask what kind of hours their grads can expect. It was also fun to see Royal Mail had a large stand at the fair (and their exhibitors turned up) - and to listen to the grads ribbing them.

Finally, at the Birmingham fair I wandered over to the Aston University stand to say hi to the folks there, which ended up turning into a nice little meeting point for the various ex-grads who've managed to land themselves jobs now. I think I volunteered to have a profile of my [ahem] fantastic success in the new Undergraduate Prospectus.

Free Money

Someone recently turned me on to QuidCo.com - which offers varying levels of cashback on a superb range of online stores. I've seen similar offers before, but most involve selling your soul and/or buying lots of things you don't want. QuidCo is different, gives me lots of money, and isn't paying me in any way to say all of this.

The way it works is quite fantastic. Traditionally, retailers would offer a commission to any advertising agency or publication that sent business their way. The agency would then spend money trying to persuade people to click-through, and pocket the takings.

QuidCo on the other hand simply waits for users to come to it - and then hands over the majority of the commission. For very little work, they get their 10/20% cut, and their members keep coming back time and again for an 80/90% cut. It's really quite simple:

1. Find something you want to buy online.
2. Search QuidCo for somewhere to buy it (often the original site you found).
3. Clear all your cookies. Most stores put a tracking cookie on your computer to see where you came from, if that doesn't say QuidCo you won't get your money.
4. Click through to the store.
5. Buy.
6. Profit.

Here's my latest earnings:


Yep, that really is £100 from o2. All I had to do was re-order the very same 12 month, £20/month SIM only contract that I was just about to renew.

Enjoy.
Xx

Ryanair

I just got back from a long weekend in Italy (and I'll gloat about how wonderful it was in a post replete with pictures shortly), bookended by flights from The Low Fares Airline.

Somehow (and not just thanks to the Microsoft expenses account) I've always avoided Ryanair in the past. Apparently their foibles are well known but, despite recent claims that they were considering charging for toilet access or planning a super-budget model, whereby passengers stand for the journey I still didn't quite appreciate what an experience it would be.

Boarding was fun, with a priority aisle available for anyone who paid for it, or the very old & very young. I thought this a lovely idea, until it actually came to boarding and we found that the priority passengers simply got to stand around on some stairs for an extra 10 minutes whilst everyone else waited by the gate. After that it was all equality...everyone got to stand around in a stairwell. Why on earth don't they just assign seats? It can't cost any more (not even printer ink, given that everyone has to pay £5 to check in online).

Onboard there was some beautiful classical music playing as we walked on (I later found this same 18 second file plays at the start of every flight, it's not an indication of their cultural aspirations). A soothing pre-recorded Irish voice talked us through everything and we were away with no extra charges..

..but the voice continued, offering us scratchcards, hot food, cold food, perfumes, gifts - there's less advertising in American TV than on a Ryanair flight. The voice was occasionally interrupted for a J20 advert (which could naturally be bought on board). The flight attendants spent much more time trying to sell stuff than...anything really.

It's not all negative - there was a little fanfare as the plane landed which prompted cheering from the passengers, and Ryanair are now giving away a million free seats (actually they're £4.99 and don't include taxes) after their recent tiff with the BBC.

I still wouldn't recommend it though.

Xx

Sniffer Bees

Inscentinel's VASOR136 looks a bit like a hand-held hoover, but contains 36 specially trained honeybees that can alert a user to a whole range of dangerous or interesting compounds present in the environment.



Yes, seriously.

One loads up their VASOR136 with cassettes of trained honeybees (36 in total) and takes it into some threatened/interesting location; airport security or a prospective mine perhaps. Through Pavlovian Conditioning (I can't wait to have children), when exposed to ambient air (by default the bees are only exposed to purified air within the hoover VASOR136) the bees will stick their tongues out if whatever substance they're trained to detect is in the air. This is then monitored, and a probabilistic result is displayed to the human overlord.

For maximum accuracy, all 36 bees can be conditioned to one trigger, or for versatility the bees may be grouped into separate sensing groups. You can even bring along spare cassettes of bees to swap in and out as and when needed. Yes, seriously.

And, finally, for those of you concerned about bee welfare, there's a whole section devoted to it here.

Awesome.

Where Women Want to Work

The Times has recently publicised a list of the top 50 places women want to work. Unfortunately it's more of a farce than an ITV phone-in..

This year there were ~62 entrants. All the winning entries are paid-up clients of recruitment consultancy firm Aurora (about £12k for their services for a year). The sole judges in this competition are recruitment consultancy firm Aurora.

Even better, there's one company in there, McKinsey & Company, that have won this award four years in a row. Every year they've had exactly 1,000 employees according to The Times (you'll note every other company gives a very exact figure). Can you guess how many employees one needs to be considered for this award?

Further, if one checks McKinsey & Company's reports, press statements, website...and so on - you'll note they have somewhere between 600 and 750 employees according to all their literature.

Nice :)

There's a bit more info and supporting documentation - albeit full of someone's opinions - over on Wikileaks (which, you may have seen, also recently posted a leak of the MoD's 'How To Stop Leaks' document).

Piano Stairs

This innovative little trick, courtesy of Volkswagen, is a great little excercise in social psychology. I wonder how it would scale though..