Recruitment TV.

The new financial year always brings the next migration, not of Wildebeests, but job hunters looking for greener pastures, a sea change or a pot of gold. Most people do it quietly and seruptisciously, so as to avoid the boss finding out. Some are prepared to do it via head hunters and recruiters, willing to pay someone else to find their dream job. Others do it in the open glare of the TV lights looking for reality fame to provide them escape from their humdrum lives.

With the economy heading to so called zero unemployment, people have the confidence of a future with different directions and the attraction of becoming the next Jamie Oliver holds sway.

Watching shows like Masterchef, I wonder if anyone is happy with their job. Seems the lawyers, bankers, IT specialists and others on this show can’t wait to leave their 60 hour work week on 6 figures to work in stressfully hot kitchens for 70 hours and half the pay. Replacing glamour with grease the kitchen hopefuls cook for their lives and future. I wonder how many of their employers were aware of their dissatisfaction with their working life or did they find out the first time they saw them on TV? Employers are always looking for the star performer but how do the employers manage their staff after they have been eliminated early on in the series, knowing they really don’t want to be at work anymore?

Traffic and real estate used to be the water cooler or Xerox machine conversations we all had to have, to fit in, but culinary expertise and the obsession with food and owning our own piece of culinary paradise have made inroads on our small talk psyche. The next generations aren’t looking for the quarter acre lot anymore, they are looking to cook in a suitably trendy and taste appreciative suburb near you.

The recruitment companies are saying it is a backlash to a life of processing in an office where people are pidgeon holed without a future. I would love to ask one of the Masterchef hopefuls, after spending a couple of years chopping, dicing and scouring if they haven’t just substituted one process for another?

Be careful what you wish for.

Certainly the mantra of creativity can be heard whenever someone talks about opening their own café or restaurant but that can be quickly pushed aside as they prepare their ten thousandth chicken schnitzel meal because their signature dish didn’t quite make it. As much as the public talk about food experimentation and gourmet experiences, the majority of eateries find a menu that pays the bills and proceed to replicate that forever. Not sure but that sounds a lot like a mind numbing process?

So what to make of the TV hopefuls carrying their speciality dish as the one and only line on their CV. Is this the new employment media? Will we see a SEEK channel along with before and after episodes of successful job applicants. Or a Recruitment Survivor channel where employers get to put prospects through torture before hiring the winner?

Or is this just one new recruitment channel to go with the rest of the social media channels making it easier for the next migration to take place?