Think you can pull the wool over the foodie eyes of Waitrose? No chance: the food retailer, is using a new online recruitment tool that will ensure the highest calibre candidates progress through to its graduate selection centres. 2,500 applied this year, and expect even more next year – so the new tool will filter applicants to only take those that have the potential to be future store managers. Graduate DILEMMAS is an online test that assesses your judgment and decision-making skills in relation to common work situations. For Waitrose, current store managers with detailed knowledge were asked to complete Graduate DILEMMAS and indicate how effective candidates should respond. Based on their responses a  bespoke scoring key was developed for the company.

You’ve got to look outside the box, under it and gauche, doit et centre to get a job this summer: consider then Scottish sausage-skin maker Devro – they make collagen casings for snorkers instead of the traditional gut casing. Not interested? Profits are up 120% with opportunities to work in the USA, Australia and the Czech Republic. Why not?! It beats watching Jeremy Kyle and reading Sylvia Plath. Sausages!

Congratulations to the media sector: employees who work in media, publishing and entertainment are the biggest drinkers in England - getting through an average of 44 units a week, the equivalent to four bottles of wine or 19 bottles of beer. They are followed by the IT crowd on 34 units, then service sector on 33 units, and then finance, insurance and real estate at 29 units – no wonder they were the first to suffer in the recession! Many of those in the media surveyed by the YouGov research admitted feeling pressure to drink by colleagues, and many drinking to relieve stress. What’s my advice if a colleague is forcing you to drink? Drink more than them, then fight them and sleep with them. Simultaneously.

Oh happy day: recession winner McDonalds is planning to take on the already struggling Starbucks by opening a massive 1,200 McCafes across Europe (Starbucks has 1,300 stores). The finance boss of Maccy-Ds is the spokesmen on this one (which gives you an idea of motive) and he proclaimed the lofty ambition to becoming the biggest coffee seller in Europe. A huge boost for European café culture, I’m sure. Hate them or loathe them, McDonald’s is a great employer, and if you haven’t seen the package available to graduates on the McJob, take a look. Just don’t come McCrying to McMe when you wake up and realise you’ve worked there for seven years, been relocated to Milton Keynes, married a co-worker, both got fat, clean your car every weekend, that you’re best friends are a couple called Paul and Joan, you have a spaghetti jar, and IBS. Mark my words…

You better believe that ethics are big business – as if proof were needed, step forward Cadbury to become the first mass-market chocolate brand to adopt the Fairtrade certification mark. The confectionery group will certify 300m of its Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate bars as well as its packaged cocoa, at a cost of £1.5m ($2.1m), by the end of summer. But Fairtrade ain’t cheap, I hear you mutter, so that will explain why the company raised prices last year, partly to absorb the cost of the move. It is good news, that may make other big brands adopt a similar move, rather than claiming its price, not conscience that will drive consumer spending in the recession. After all, nearly three-quarters of British households bought Fairtrade goods last year.