Wanted: Someone Who Can Communicate In Plain English

PORING OVER the jobs classifieds in the Arbroath Herald, Dundee Courier and Aberdeen Press and Journal every Friday is an unremittingly depressing experience. It’s amazing how often the phrases “evening and weekend working required” and “minimum wage” crop up. Fortunately, light relief is provided with the occasional advert – usually placed by a council or educational establishment – which despite taking up many column inches with fancy slogans and font types, manages to avoid telling you what the job being advertised actually is.
Take this example, which was placed by Dundee University in today’s Courier:

Information and Communication Services
CAPS Project
Trainer/Project Assistant
Grade 5(£18,165 - £21,000)
Fixed term until 31 July 2008.

We are looking for someone with recent experience in organising and delivering training sessions. The University is working on implementation of the eProcurement Scotl@nd system and this is an exciting project. You will be computer literate, have excellent communication skills and the ability to work flexibly to achieve different tight deadlines and targets by prioritising your workload. You will be a proactive team member and use your initiative acting in a professional and ethical manner.
Further details and an application pack are available etc etc........

OK, can anyone tell me what the job actually is? It’s something to do with “information and communication services” and something called the “CAPS Project”, and you need to have “excellent communication skills”, and it’s an “exciting project”, but it doesn’t actually tell you what you would be doing. Continue wading through the treacly prose and you find further clues: you need to have “recent experience in organising and delivering training sessions.” Yes, but training sessions in what? First aid techniques? Basket-weaving? International semaphore etiquette? I thought recruitment adverts were designed to entice and intrigue potential talent. This one appeared designed to crush out any spark of interest in the reader.
Still, convinced that buried somewhere in this morass of corporate-speak could be the semblance of a job that was perfect for me – I’ve got a proven background in information, communication and training – I forced myself to type in the website address. What followed was like the scene out of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe when the heroes stumble into a strange, surreal and slightly scary world where nothing appears to make any sense:

This post has arisen due to a new exciting project – CAPS (Commitment & Advanced Procurement Service). The Project will combine commitment accounting with advanced procurement practices, in conjunction with the Scottish Executive’s eProcurement Scotl@nd system.
This Project aspires to:-
• Obtain Best Value for Money in our procurement of goods/services
• Provide Senior Management within the University with an accurate picture of committed funds over a period of time, to enable business planning and decision-making.
• Enable individual College/Departmental Heads to proactively manage their agreed budgetary allocations.
• Deliver greater efficiencies and unlocking of savings that can be redirected to front-line services in support of institutional teaching, research and commercial objectives.
• Achieve Superior Performance Status under the McClelland Review.
• Participate in collaborative procurement to a greater level.

Now I think what all of the above was trying to say was this:

Accountant wanted to help us manage our budgets a bit better.

So nothing to do with “information and communications” or “training” then.
As if being out of work and looking for a job isn’t bad enough, you have to put up with shit like this too.