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A recruiter's point of view

by Joanna Hoddinott, Senior Recruitment Consultant, Advanced Resource Managers Ltd.

The demise of an institution

July 25, 2006 1:38 PM

Sorry it's been a while since my last post - busy busy busy and all that. A good recruitment consultant should never have very much spare time on their hands!

Out of hours, however, I am into music of all varieties, and as a music fan I've been glad to see the charts occasionally troubled by a bit of retro stuff - the Zutons, for example. But with Top of the Pops (or TOTP if you prefer) increasingly becoming a window onto a market of manufactured dross, I've also been wondering how I should feel about its imminent demise. My feelings about this are strange and hard to justify. TOTP probably hasn't been consistently good for donkey's years: a sad reflection of the power of marketing in pop music, which has resulted in the domination of tweenie rubbish. When I try and think of the show's heyday, I'm not really sure that I was ever around to see it. In the eighties I watched it for the occasional good band; I did the same in the nineties, and haven't watched it for a long time now. So why am I sad to see it go? I guess it comes down to the fact that, like many people, I don't want to see the end of an institution that is in some way synonymous with my own youth - boo hoo. Is the end of TOTP a good thing or a bad thing? Let me know!

Speaking of youth and ageing and all that, you may know that in October new legislation will come into effect that makes it illegal to discriminate by age in the workplace. This applies whether you're 18 or 60. Should somebody not be considered for a senior role just because they're under 30? And should somebody with a wealth of ability and experience not be offered a job just because they may want to retire in ten years' time?

On my company's website is a poll asking people whether they've experienced or witnessed age discrimination at work - why not submit your response (it takes, ooo, about 1 second). We'll do an analysis of the full response and put it on the site before the legislation comes into effect in October.

Cheers all, remember that your ability to do a job is the most important thing, and that you're rarely "too young" or "too old". And here's to Top of the Pops, which, it seems, has officially had its day.

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