At long last we have discovered the secret of business success and it's clearly related to the humble spud.
At the Fusion conference in November 2011 Peter Crome opened his speech by telling the audience his first job in catering and hospitality was peeling potatoes and he did this for three weeks solid. He was very proud of his potato peeling skills to the current day.
A recent news article about Steve Langmead of Capita UK stated that he started life as Mr Chip walking the streets of Aberdeen accompanied by his friend Harry Haddock.
Neither of these beginnings are what you might have expected from such prominent figures or are they? At many discussions of late youth unemployment has been a topic of conversation - whether how difficult it is to get the right young people or how difficult it is for young people. There seems to be a commonly held view that young people do not want to do the horrible jobs that some of us did when we were younger to get started - that they want to emerge from education and go straight into management in some way. This may be an urban myth of course but in my personal experience I have found this to be the case several times. A graduate of an event management course complained not that long ago that she was having to work on a Saturday at an event - when I asked her why that was a problem she said that she had a degree in event management so shouldn't be on the ground doing hands-on activities to do with events.
I would also like to point out my own tenuous potato link here. At a job interview I was asked to describe what vegetable I was and why - I said I was a potato because I was very versatile and adaptable. I remember doing the interview with a potato I had bought along with me sitting on the desk complete with a little flag in the top with my name on it. I never got the job but the power of the potato is still with me.
At the Fusion conference in November 2011 Peter Crome opened his speech by telling the audience his first job in catering and hospitality was peeling potatoes and he did this for three weeks solid. He was very proud of his potato peeling skills to the current day.
A recent news article about Steve Langmead of Capita UK stated that he started life as Mr Chip walking the streets of Aberdeen accompanied by his friend Harry Haddock.
Neither of these beginnings are what you might have expected from such prominent figures or are they? At many discussions of late youth unemployment has been a topic of conversation - whether how difficult it is to get the right young people or how difficult it is for young people. There seems to be a commonly held view that young people do not want to do the horrible jobs that some of us did when we were younger to get started - that they want to emerge from education and go straight into management in some way. This may be an urban myth of course but in my personal experience I have found this to be the case several times. A graduate of an event management course complained not that long ago that she was having to work on a Saturday at an event - when I asked her why that was a problem she said that she had a degree in event management so shouldn't be on the ground doing hands-on activities to do with events.
I would also like to point out my own tenuous potato link here. At a job interview I was asked to describe what vegetable I was and why - I said I was a potato because I was very versatile and adaptable. I remember doing the interview with a potato I had bought along with me sitting on the desk complete with a little flag in the top with my name on it. I never got the job but the power of the potato is still with me.
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