If you offer peanuts, you get monkeys

And if you give chocolate, what do you get then? Recruitment; it's a difficult task and I used to think that interviewing was a two way process, with the candidate sussing out what is on offer every bit as much as the prospective employer. Was I wrong? Are employers struggling so hard to find good staff that they feel the need to give away goody bags, or are they actively seeking out endorphin chasing post-adolescents as task-focussed automatons, manipulated through sweet cravings rather than managed to achieve job satisfaction?
Master Drage caused me to chortle - I thought he was joking about the appeal of the company website and the chocs as a real incentive to join the company, but I'm not so sure. Perhaps I'm just a killjoy and miffed that I was never offered a literal sweetener by a prospective employer. Perhaps that's where Sir Alan goes wrong; he offers such a sugar rush (sorry!) what with his name, the media attention and instant TV notoriety that he gets planks rather than people to choose from.
Very shortly I will be chairing an interview panel to fill the most senior post in a third sector organisation. They will need to lead a great team, achieve a complex set of objectives and give all stakeholders more than a warm, fuzzy, post-choc feeling. Am I bonkers to take it all so seriously or should I be offering a year's supply of jelly beans and give the job to the person who successfully negotiates the addition of Smarties?

(The Beatles insert is entirely gratuitous; any excuse for a good tune and a giggle).