Dominic Cummings calls for 'weirdos and misfits' to work for him in Number 10
3 min read
Dominic Cummings has launched an appeal for “weirdos and misfits” to apply for jobs in Downing Street as part of his plans to shake up the way the Government is run.
Boris Johnson’s top adviser set out his plans in a bizarre job ad posted on his personal blog.
In a move putting himself at odds with the civil service’s traditional recruitment methods, he said he wanted “true wild cards” to email him directly if they believed they were up to the job.
But he added: “I don’t want confident public school bluffers. I want people who are much brighter than me who can work in an extreme environment.
“If you play office politics, you will be discovered and immediately binned.”
One of the jobs up for grabs is that of Mr Cummings’s own personal assistant.
But he made clear that the junior researcher chosen to fill the role faced a stressful experience.
“This will involve a mix of very interesting work and lots of uninteresting trivia that makes my life easier which you won’t enjoy,” he said.
“You will not have weekday date nights, you will sacrifice many weekends — frankly it will [be] hard having a boy/girlfriend at all. It will be exhausting but interesting and if you cut it you will be involved in things at the age of ~21 that most people never see.”
Mr Cummings said he was looking for applications in seven categories: data scientists and software developers, economists, policy experts, project managers, communication experts, junior researchers, and “weirdos and misfits with odd skills”.
He said: “We want to hire an unusual set of people with different skills and backgrounds to work in Downing Street with the best officials, some as spads [special advisers] and perhaps some as officials.
“If you are already an official and you read this blog and think you fit one of these categories, get in touch.”
Setting out the application process, the former Vote Leave campaign chief said: “Send a max 1 page letter plus CV to ideasfornumber10@gmail.com and put in the subject line ‘job/’ and add after the / one of: data, developer, econ, comms, projects, research, policy, misfit.
“I’ll have to spend time helping you so don’t apply unless you can commit to at least 2 years.
“I’ll bin you within weeks if you don’t fit — don’t complain later because I made it clear now.”
The 3,000-word job ad was posted on the same day that Rachel Wolf, who helped draw up with Tory election manifesto, set out plans for a radical shake-up of the way Whitehall is run.
She said officials could face regular exams, and called for an end to the "merry-go-round" of frequent job changes for civil servants.
But Dave Penman, general secretary of the First Division Association, the trade union representing civil servants, tweeted: “Following comments from both Rachel Wolf and Dominic Cummings, it’s clear the Prime Minister’s aides don’t fully understand the modern realities of the civil service or, indeed, the impact of a decade of pay stagnation.”
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