Had a call from a star student now with a major power utility. Seems they are worried about their aging workforce. Think you share this problem? – how about 50% of your staff being within 5-10 years of retiring!

This, of course, is the inevitable result of bad HR and corporate strategy going back 10-20 years – if you don’t have people with 10 years’ experience today, it’s because you didn’t hire 10 years ago [+couldn't steal them from rivals]. Simple – yes, obvious – yes … so why do multi-billion-dollar firms make such huge screw-ups? Couldn’t be that old culprit ‘investor expectations’ again, could it? It’s hard to tough it out and insist on sustained trainee hiring when all around you are ‘downsizing’ and delivering what the Street or the City ‘want’.