Quality, not quantity

It’s been a productive – if a bit tiring – day today. A late night out last night meant I was a bit reluctant this morning, but it was worth the effort and I’ve arrived home with a brand new task to get my teeth in to.

New opportunity

The new challenge involves interviewing clients of the NHS Jobs website. The site covers all jobs available within the NHS, and claims to make searching and applying for jobs a simple task. To illustrate this point, the site carries numerous success stories told by past clients. My brief is to contact individuals who are willing to use their experience of the site as a case study to be published online.

Am I worrying about nothing?

This sounded fine to me, until it emerged I would interviewing the people by phone. I’ve never used this interviewing technique before, and I’m pretty much up for a challenge these days, but it still seems a little daunting. I have expressed concern for my ability to write, listen, and plan the next question all at the same time before. Now, it seems, my multitasking skills will truly be tested. I don’t know if it’s a male thing or not - I can only speak personally – but the thought of it unnerves me. It also involves persuading my housemates keeping quiet for longer than five minutes, and I’m genuinely not sure which will prove harder.

New recruits

As the pioneering Camden Calling / Poached Creative representative, I was pleased to see another Camden Calling member, Dan, join Poached today. CC’s resident graphic designer, he started a six week course today with a view to improving the quality of their art and design work. Another trainee, Michelle, also started the design course today. To be honest, I haven’t had a chance to speak to either of them yet, but it’s good to have new people on board!

Less is more

The feedback I received on the latest Camden Calling newsletter was very useful. Hints on style, sequence, and presentation are always of great use. The primary problem, though, was just as I suspected: it’s too long. But if I make it much shorter, how will I possibly cover everything? The answer to that is by being ruthless. Cut every unnecessary word possible. I can certainly see the logic in that. What I don’t get is why, time and time again at school, it was drummed in to my head that somehow ‘more is better.’

Come on... we all did it!

In their school days, I’m sure that, occasionally, everyone padded out work purely to meet some stupid minimum word or page limit. This is ridiculous – surely being concise is more of an art-form than producing elongated waffle filled with pointless joining words. The apparent correlation between number of words written and quality produced mystifies me.

With my rant over, it’s time for me to end this for another week. Anyway, I think I’ve just reached the word limit.