Getting a job is not like making chocolate cake

I was having what seemed like a perfectly normal conversation with a manager when he calmly told me that a particular aspect of recruitment "was not a vanilla process". I did what most people do when they don't have a clue what someone's talking about: made vague sounds of agreement and hit Google the moment I hung up the phone.

My first couple of searches threw up pages of links to techniques for curing vanilla pods and recipes for old-fashioned chocolate cake, but eventually I hit the management mother lode and discovered that using a vanilla process makes work more like riding a bike than managing a project. So, as far as I can tell, this means that recruitment is not like riding a bike and that job-seekers should therefore avoid turning up to interviews wearing padded lycra shorts.

This man is probably not on his way to a job interview

(Pic from chriswalsh_35)