The Labour Industry - Knowledge work is not factory work!

I've been speaking with a lot of headhunters recently. I have noticed some very interesting things about the way the recruiting process is accomplished. Employers invariably specify a set of skills, a broad stroke set of desired experiences (including educational) and sometimes a set of "tasks" that the role is required to perform. Recruiters then take those criteria and attempt to find matches within their database of existing CVs. If they can't find one, then they will post the role to the general public (via sites like Monster.com and/or print media) hoping to get a match among the inevitable hundreds to thousands of responses.

Now, there's nothing wrong with this if you are seeking a tradesman or low level/entry level staffer. This is because at this level you are hiring for a role that either has a very well defined set of actions that can be performed by anyone with the appropriate skills training, or has no complex skill requirements at all (a parking attendant for example - my apologies to any parking attendants reading this, but I calls 'em as I sees 'em). This model applies to pretty much any role with well defined "technical" requirements: plumber, carpenter, software programmer, network administrator, lawyer, etc.

However, there is a problem with this model as soon as you begin to move into more creative roles. While there are basic technical skills required by any artist, their relative value to an organisation is rarely a function of their technical skills, but rather a function of their less tangible talents: interpersonal ability, capacity for "free thinking," broad cultural and social awareness, insightfulness, IQ and EQ (both notoriously hard to accurately measure) etc. Now you may think that artists are a fairly small group within the overall workforce, but I would disagree. Let's think about who the artists are:

• A large portion of all "C" level people (all the notably successful ones)
• Most Architects (systems, software AND buildings)
• Most non-institutional consultants
• "Effective" team leaders (from team leads to VPs)
• All "entrepreneurial" types ("taking from between" is an art, not a science)
• Anyone working in R&D SHOULD be an artist
• Successful sales people/business developers
• Almost anyone in marketing
• Some CMAs (that's right, accounting has an art component - often invisible)

The list is HUGE and growing - why is it growing? Because the "knowledge" economy workforce is becoming a larger and larger percentage of the overall workforce, and most of the workers in this community have a much higher "art" component to their work than traditional industrial roles.

Now, what does this mean to the recruiter? It likely means that they are sending inappropriate people to their clients who fit the "skill matrix" but are completely wrong for the role, as well as skipping over, or entirely missing, candidates who are perfect for the role, but don't have the skills matrix.

So how do you manage this talent acquisition gap? There are many things that can be done, some of them counter-intuitive;

• Use more creative methods to create candidate profiles; Many companies now profile candidates as part of the interviewing process using psychology based testing suites. These profiling systems should be included as part of the standard profiling process for all candidate screening - effectively, these profiles should become part of a standard CV. Traditionally, many short employments over time indicate a problem - however, in the modern world, jobs may only be valuable to the employee (and sometimes the employer) for as little as 12 months. A candidate with 5 jobs in 10 years has a valuable breadth of experience that a candidate with 2 jobs during that period cannot. It has been often documented that the true power of Silicon Valley was the cross pollenation that occured because of the extremely mobile workforce that changed jobs on average every year.
• Change the method of describing roles in order to attract a broader candidate population; Invariably, in most "artistic" roles, the company does not require many specific technical skills. A software engineer who has a history of working primarily with C++ will rarely have a problem working in a Java environment. Moreover, many "artistic" technologists will have no problem moving laterally across industries and technologies. This is because their value is not in any specific technology, but in their understanding and artistic appreciation for the underlying realities of technology. To improve the search process, there needs to be a role profiling engine that assesses the adaptability, breadth, creativity, as well as the core required technical abilities for a given role within an organisation, and marries those to a set of business targets for the role. "Solution Architect with java, j2ee, presentation skills, networking, and project management for the publishing industry" will achieve a certain type of response vector - likely a lot of mid level java programmers looking to move up. "Software application oriented team leader and problem solver with strong interpersonal skills to design, build and manage a web based catalog and data mining service" will get you a much broader response with fewer java programmers and a lot more design professionals with the appropriate skill sets. (Both job descriptions are describing the same role).
• Interviewing should be about cultural fit and relationship clarification; If the candidate gets to the interview, then the only "technical" question should be - "Did you lie or dissemble in your CV?" The rest is about ensuring that the candidate understands the role they are to undertake, and the employer is comfortable that the candidate's personality is a fit for their organisation and the team in question. These "soft" tests can be accomplished using role based questions and situational explorations and should be very open. One thing that should definitely occur in these sessions is the "uncomfortable" question - and ideally, they should go both ways. Employers need to realise that the interview process is a two way street - especially when we get to this level of employment - "Artistic" candidates are not common (yet) and are therefore able to be picky about who they work with. I have often felt that the true role of the HR rep at an interview process where they are not the interviewer should be that of mediator, facilitator and sometimes instigator; and hiring managers should gage the quality of an interview by how animated THEY get during the process.

Now while this may fly in the face of some more traditional HR theory, I think that the first major recruiting site that begins to create candidate profiles this way and requires their clients to list their openings in a more quantitative as well as qualitative manner will experience a hockeystick event in terms of successful matches and both client and candidate satisfaction - not to mention profit, if the site is connected to a recruiting firm!

Just the kernel of another idea that occured to me today. Please feel free to pick it apart (intelligently, please) or improve upon it! Click the comment link below!