Following Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s job summit last week, where he revealed his plans to help the long-term unemployed back to work, Recruiter was intrigued to discover No 10’s latest recruitment need. An HR specialist maybe or change management expert perhaps? Nothing of the sort. The real need (according to The Daily Mail website) is for — a butler (oops, front of house assistant in Whitehall-speak).

The advert was placed by the Cabinet Office on the Civil Service Recruitment Gateway, an online job board for civil service jobs. It avoids any direct reference to No 10 though, stating that the £30,000-a-year job is based at ‘a prestigious Grade I listed building in Whitehall’. In response to howls of predicted outrage from the Tories, a Cabinet Office spokesperson explained that the butler post was “not a new position. It’s to
replace somebody who left before Christmas. The salary band for the job has not changed”.

Other positions also being recruited are a Whitehall ‘chief psychologist’, a team of Inland Revenue snoopers to spy on Revenue staff suspected of fraud and a new £185,000-a-year mandarin to ‘support’ business secretary Peter Mandelson. Listen out for further cries of shock and anguish from disgusted Tories of Tunbridge Wells once news of those get out.