Every organisation I've ever been part of spends time looking at how it attracts, recruits and retains employees - they wouldn't last long if they didn't. So today I find myself doing a bunch of tedious form filling on a 'Job Profiler'. Not such a bad job in many ways, I should at this point mention that it was for my own role, it just took a little time, patience and a methodical manner; out of the office so I could concentrate on it, as there are way too many distractions sat at my desk.

So why then, when sat in 25C heat in my back garden, do I find myself becoming rather annoyed about the whole thing? In fact, positively pissed off I'd say!

The form filling is aimed at doing the usual analysis of skills and their relative importance in doing the job, attention to detail, analysing data, delivering results and so on. Nothing untoward you'd think. At least not until I reached a short section on 'Building Relationships', and specifically a sub-element dealing with 'Impressing People'. It's not until you look at the declared facets of 'Impressing People' that you begin to understand where my ire begins to kick in, the facets being "Attracting Attention", "Promoting Personal Achievements" and "Gaining Recognition". At this point I begin to wonder what I'm completing. Is it really a requirement of my job, to blow my own trumpet? Shouldn't actions speak louder than words? Is this really a charter for some sleezeball of a bullshit merchant?

I suppose it's fair to say that I'm not a great fan of those who go in for self-aggrandisement and I certainly don't want that sort of crap written into the job spec. There are more than enough who'll do that sort of self-promotion anyway, without encouraging them. On a scale of 1 (Not Important) to 7 (Critical), you might rightly suspect I didn't rank this one very high. Maybe I'm missing the point of doing a job here and maybe I am (I've been wrong before), but this isn't my cup of tea.

I'm anticipating questions...

PS: I should point out that the questionnaire is text book stuff being run out of a consultancy, it's not a creation of the people I work for.