Strange world, American big business. A report in the Times last week was headlined: “US consultancy will pay recruits to spend a year doing yoga”. Sounded like a doddle, so naturally I read on.
The article included the following from Blair Ciesil, “global leader of talent attraction” at McKinsey. “With demand from clients expanding, we continue to look for distinctive and diverse talent from all sources to accelerate sustainable, inclusive growth with our clients...
“We match each individual new colleague with a start date based on their preferences and in our cycle of projects to support them with the best possible onboarding and development experience.”
I absolutely had no idea that recruitment was such an onerous duty. I’d always thought that you simply employed the best person for the job. I had no idea about “onboarding”, whatever that may be, but it sounds horribly rigorous. Still, I’m sure it makes perfect sense in McKinsey land, though I’m glad I won’t be going there in the near future.
More local council lingo, courtesy of reader Libby Kemp: “The London Borough of Ealing in a public reports pack referred to pavements as a ‘Walking Corridor’.” No comment.
On the same theme, Denny Plowman offers the following: “Here is an example from a local council’s museum annual report on how its shop fared: “Prestigious items with an erratic turnover pattern that nevertheless ought to have a presence in a museum retail outlet.” In translation: stuff that didn’t sell.”
And thank you to Ian McRobert for the following: “Entries in Daily Telegraph’s TV guide this week: Sarah Beeny’s New Life in the Country boxsetted on All 4 tonight; The Real Crown: Inside the House of Windsor; this boxsetted five-part documentary….” Nouns as verbs, eh? Not pretty, not grown up.
Anyway, that’s quite enough from me, so if you have been… thanks for reading. Cheerio.
• Jonathan Bouquet is an Observer columnist
