Following a conversation in the local about the standard of education now, a businessman friend told me that because there will be a lot of school-leavers at the end of this academic year, who will in all probability finish up in the dole queue, he decided to set on two to train in his IT business.

This is because one of his staff is due to retire at the end of the year. He said that if he could find two youngsters who were interested in IT it would give them time to at least gain some knowledge of what’s involved from the person retiring soon.

He placed an advert in the local paper and insisted that applicants should apply in writing in the first instance, and to included a résumé of their knowledge of the subject and what, if any, training they had in school.

To his amazement he received nearly 200 applications, of which he had to throw out almost half of them for various reasons. 83 were obviously done on word processor like “Word” although he had stated “in writing” in the advert. The reason he wanted the applications in writing is because there is no spellchecker in a pen and you can basically judge a person by the handwriting and layout of the letter. Others were thrown out because the handwriting was virtually unreadable and untidily laid out.

Another type of applicant he rejected was the kind of youngster who saw themselves as trendy and streetwise, and used “modern English” to impress which fell flat with my friend. You know the type, they use 4 instead of “for”, 2 instead of “to” or “too” and write the personal “I” as “i”. The latest idea now is to put the period “.” at the beginning of the following sentence i.e., “The cat sat on the mat .the dog barked madly ,and the cat ran away”, if you see wot i mean, innit?

Rejecting all the above type of letters eliminated having to interview a lot of people who were obviously unsuitable.

He was left with 48 applications that were worth at least a first interview. Most of those turned up scruffily dressed, or reeking of fag smoke, or both, and had no idea how to handle themselves during an interview.

In the end he finished up with two girls who dressed nice, spoke “proper English like wot i do” and seemed very keen on the work involved. He told me he is looking forward to setting them on soon.