Recruitment just became sexy

Everyone, it seems, had an opinion on the latest series of The Apprentice. Suddenly we all have something to say on recruitment. After 14 years my patch has just become sexy. It's been a long wait.

After reading many of the comments I decided the subject had been flogged to death so have avoided it in my upcoming Thursday FT column which, instead, will have more to say on social networking.

I do, however, have some sympathy with the comments on CV cheating in this item on the Recruitment and Employment Confederation website. It doesn't say much for the recruitment industry when one of their own is caught out in this way.

Christmas cards and the man from Del Monte

Should we mourn the passing of the corporate Christmas card? Those big, posh, glossy cards bearing the signatures of half-a-dozen people you have never met are becoming as rare as pixie dust. I still get a few but their number is dwindling every year, replaced by emails, messages about donations or simply nothing at all.

I remember the days when the office secretaries at the Financial Times would dust down their lists and ask if we had any names to add. Most years the FT cards looked pretty swish with scenes of old London until one year we had one with a commercial-looking Santa that triggered an editorial protest led by the then banking editor, David Lascelles.

After that, David became the FT's Christmas card "man from Del Monte" until one year the cards did not appear - gone in the seasonal economy drives that began with the diaries.

In the 1970s and 1980s you knew you had arrived in the executive suite when you received one of the big black desk diaries with a gold embossed FT on the front and an atlas in the back.

I would get half-a-dozen to hand out to favoured contacts (or relatives, since there were no questions asked). The problem was that giving a diary to the same people every year created an expectation after the initial pleasure of receiving one had died away.

First they (faceless management) cut the quota down, then the diary allocation disappeared altogether. But the Christmas cards continued until they too made way for a charity donation.

The same thing happened to the boozy expense-account lunch. Of course, they still continue among a few stalwarts, but nothing like they were and some will say this is a good thing. Much better to stay at your screen, messaging your Facebook friends than sharing a plate of cheese and a glass of wine with a colleague. What does this old fool know? He's nothing more than a ghost of Christmas Past.