THE APPRENTICE

I spent today writing a job description and thinking up telephone interview questions. We're hiring another technical author, a person who, if successful, will get the auspicious privilege of working in a team of two... with me.

I say let's forget the normal HR process. It's way too straightforward. What we should do is filter down the inevitable hundreds of thousands of applicants to a much smaller group, say twenty individuals who, for some inexplicable reason, believe themselves to be the best technical authors ever to grace the planet. 

This bunch of hopefuls will be extraordinary - chosen for their braggadocio, their blistering naivity and colossal ambition, not to mention their natural propensity for continually selecting the stupidest option, despite their colossal IQs and glittering past achievements. 

Once we have our super twenty, we should then split them into teams. Over the course of several weeks, we'll give the teams some very simple authoring tasks. Can they, for example, write a features list for a new product? Work as a team to upload a help set with appropriate callouts? Organise a successful localisation drop?

Naturally, successful teams will be rewarded by progressing to the next part of the interview (another new and pointless (they won't know that) task of course) and we'll give them a little treat - maybe a fiver each to spend at the coffee van or a round of teas in our special corporate mugs? We can work out the details nearer the time...

Of course, unsuccessful teams will need to come and have a chat with me about why they failed. I imagine they'll squabble about whether 'organise' is spelled with a Z or an S and whose bright idea it was to use Google Translate instead of sending the content off to our dedicated Japanese translators and all the rest of it. That's OK because somehow, like a great bearded mystic, rubbing my wise and noble chin, this will give me deep insight into which of them is worthy of the job - and which of them need to update their LinkedIn profile.

Ah yes, that's it! Once this fractious brawl in the conference room has occurred, I think I'll just select the most suitable candi.. ah no, wait! No, I need to get it right, you know, to be absolutely sure. I'll drag it out for as long as possible. Yes, every week in an unbearably cringeworthy meeting, you know, the type that causes you to lose all faith in human kindness, I'll just ask them to point fingers at each other and then ask the daftest or shoutiest one to leave (I might even arrange them a taxi) letting the rest move on to the next (exciting) authoring challenge.

Marvellous. So the whole thing should take about 15 weeks, should humiliate 19 strangers, embarrass the company with a huge waste of resources and cause a whole bunch of people to hate each other, yes? 15 weeks. Oh I'm sure that'll be fine. I don't have much other work to do. And anyway, after all that 'interviewing' is out of the way, I can just pass it all on to the newbie right?