Surface Ripples

Who's Learned Their Lesson?

In March and April I wondered how people were looking at opportunities presented by the current world economic crisis.

Since then, stockmarkets have recovered from their lows, some economies have started to show signs of life again, and the flood of redundancies seems to have slowed to a trickle. General feeling is that things are lurching towards recovery.

Interestingly, some organisations may be persisting in making the same mistakes that got us into our current state of affairs. By this, I mean that they are being very particular about the qualifications of potential hires. Of course, this may indicate that they have learnt from their mistakes and now know exactly what they should have done, but I can't help feeling that there are others who want to hire the same kind of specialists who failed to see the problems coming - in other words, who couldn't see the whole wood for the specialist trees.

In good times and bad, specialists have their place (look at the management of our railway network which seems to be by accountants rather than engineers, for instance), but in bad times you need people who can think on their feet and think outside the proverbial box. Often, a specialist will not be able to generate the thought processes needed in these circumstances.

What people need to do is look at the skills needed for a job, ask if what they had before was right (and why/why not) and then think about the sort of skills needed for the future strategy of their company. This assumes that they are out of "survival mode" and have the luxury of thinking about the future now.

The employment market is flooded with good, hard-working people who will be an asset to any organisation that they join. People are not like specialist parts for a car, and in searching for exactly the right match, hirers risk passing up golden opportunities to take on some real talent at a lower price which, although it might go through a "learning curve", will prove invaluable in the long term. Some people will still "miss the boat".

Labels: Strategy

posted by William Martin @ 20:09