But that isn't the annoying metaphor of the day. No real chimps were actually present. Here is a conversation I had with a pink, bald ape:

Recruiter: It sounds like you'd be a square peg in a round hole.
Dan: This isn't the role for me, certainly.
Recruiter: We need to find you a 'square hole'. Or we could make you into 'a round peg'!
Dan: I don't agree.
Recruiter: What shape hole do you want?
Dan (bemused): I don't want a hole at all.
Recruiter: what?
Dan: I don't believe I'm a peg. So the shape of the hole is irrelevant. I just want a really interesting job that I really, really like.
Recruiter: (silence)

Next week: One Gibbon on the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and another Gibbon (called Stanley) on stamp collecting, Lemur on being a Radio 1 DJ and a silverback on Gorilla Marketing.

So, as a rule, I treat recruiters with suspicion. However, rather like funeral directors, they are sadly sometimes necessary.

Quoth a recruitment consultant to I on receipt of my CV and having never met me: 'you need to stress the strengths that will appeal to a future employer.”

'Oh really,” said I. He said, 'absolutely!” I asked what my two strongest strengths were: 'Your degree and your time at eBay.”

I wanted don a blazer and run out into the street of Port Meirion and shout 'I'm not a number, I'm a free man!” What of me as a human? My passion for puns and humour? A love of language? My killer instinct for the salient fact? A deeply serendipitous mind? An encyclopaedic knowledge of Doctor Who? A fine singing voice? Surely these vital aspects would appeal to someone?

Inconsequential, my friends, because recruitment consultants aren't interested in people. People are candidates and candidates exist to fill roles (never jobs!). It makes you want to weep because it's a horrid way to look at the world. Poor them.