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).

Agatha Christie needs charity?

I hugely admire the National Trust. Most of the time. The audacity of taking on properties and places in perpetuity for the benefit of us all. Who else would do it? Who could even face the budgeting for supplying dusters to a stately home for ten years let alone for ministering to its every need forever? It puts the concept of long term planning into perspective. This whole 'til the end of time thing does mean you have to make your decisions on what to take on and what to put aside very carefully indeed. As an ex National Trust regional committee member (an interesting but strange experience that made me feel very odd-one-out) I have appreciated what making these decisions mean and how rigorously endowments need to be considered before taking on new holdings of land or property.
Last month I received a letter from the Trust asking for a contribution towards the major restoration of Greenway, the only surviving home of Agatha Christie. Given to the Trust by Christie's family in 2000 its gardens have been open to the public for the last 6 years and now Christie's daughter and son-in-law have died, the house also belongs to the Trust. The repairs are estimated at £3.5million, with cataloguing and conserving adding a further £600,000.
If you were to ask me for a bit of dosh to save a piece of coast, or for an ancient forest I would cough up and be glad that the Trust can be counted on to do a job that no-one else will. But Agatha Christie's house? When Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot are household icons and murder mysteries are everyone's favourite bank holiday fare? Perhaps a commercial company such as Tussauds, owners of Warwick Castle, Alton Towers and the London Eye to name a few attractions, would be better placed to take on a project like this. But as it sits with the Trust, I would suggest that the commercial exploitation potential for the property must be huge; shouldn't the Trust be generating funding for this from the private sector and creating a surplus to contribute to other less immediately attractive projects? Humphh.

To Trust or not to Trust

My time on the board of Arts and Media Training will finally be up after an extended and very rewarding 11 years. Having had a great deal of fun (yup, that's the word I'd choose) recruiting some extraordinarily talented new board members to join the still fresh and fabulous existing Directors, my time as Chair comes to an end in April 2004. So what next? Conscious that I could use the time for more reading, walking, dog patting or cultural enlightenment I am seriously looking instead at an alternative non-executive role. It kind of gets in the blood. But who with? Arts and Business have a Board Bank service to broker the right skills with the right organisation, so that's one route, but what about extending slowly, carefully and with trepidation into a new field? What about inveigling ones way into the huge beasty that is the National Trust? These days (and this is a very new development) places on the regional committees are advertised to all National Trust members, and you fill out an application which is very reminiscent of any job application you will have ever completed. And rather than referees you need three nominees, all of whom must also be members. In the West Midlands they are looking for 3 or 4 new committee members, and are interviewing 12 self-selecting bods, including myself.
Its the outdoorsy bits that get me; walking coastal paths, woodlands and beaches in the care of the NT is always a seriously appreciated pleasure, and Mopsa is always welcomed and able to get through the sensibly designed stiles and gates. The scourge of creeping commercialism is kept away from sites of natural beauty which are kept raw and accessible, balancing protection with access. Their own souvenir shops are only a minor irritant with their homogeneity firmly rooted in uppermiddleclass stereotype (yes, I think it deserves a singular description), and even so I do love the chocolate ice cream served in Heddon Valley, Devon. The gardens, the deerparks, the rarebreeds and all that countryside stuff has me all stirred up with positives, but I can't say the same for the properties, or at least how they are displayed and offered up. The Guardian ran a strong piece on how the art was displayed by the NT, and my recent visit to Attingham Park would support this blast of criticism; the rooms are so dark that you can barely see the outline of what might be a tantalising piece of beauty or a slab of dross. The many guides are charming, knowledgeable, articulate and too everpresent, and I cannot like the roped off approach that in one fell swoop diminishes the size and feel of the rooms and stops you with equally everpresent labels from touching anything, even solid marble-topped tables that could surely take the strain. However, I think we are supremely lucky in having the NT, and I am very curious to know what it would be like from the inside looking out.

Fancy a job, two days a week - unpaid?

Let's leave whimsy to look after itself for a bit and get furious instead. Yesterday's post (July 2003) brought me a letter and advert telling me that the Department of Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) have recently advertised the vacancy of Chair of the Arts Council England (ACE) now that multi-millionaire and John-Harvey-Jones-for-the-new -millennium Gerry Robinson is moving on. The letter asked me if I would circulate the advert amongst my networks. Unfortunately, I do not number multi-millionaires such as Gerry, or Lords Palumbo or Gowrie (ex ACE chairs) among my aquaintance who can delight in the rigours of ACE for no payment for two fifths of their working week. If I remember rightly, Gowrie didn't initially accept the role in the 1990s because of the lack of pay, and it would seem that nothing has changed. Are we really, so deep in new Labour times, still under the misapprehension that you need to be rich or richly retired in order to take on what is a pretty major public role? The Chair of the Arts Council of Wales is paid, and rightly so. I have several people in my "network" (ghastly phrase) who would be exceptional candidates for the role. I do not know the intimate details of their bank balances, but am horrified that DCMS expect that a glinting heap of gold is a necessary pre-requisite to becoming or even considering the ACE Chair. It's about time the Government and ACE stopped talking about Arts for All and started delivering arts for all by paying for the skill and dedication they require to advocate and develop policy at the very top. Apparently, arts policy making is only for the incredibly wealthy. Shame on you!