An article in the Globe and Mail last week made me question the way many technologies companies recruit employees. The article was entitled “Why are we training our arts grads to be baristas?“, by Lauren Friese, the founder of TalentEgg, and it attempts to make the case in macro-economic terms as to why employers have a civic duty to employ graduates from non-traditional disciplines.

Leveraging the skills of all Canada’s university graduates should be a top priority, regardless of their area of expertise. The reasons are threefold:

First: we’re all investors in higher education. Whether or not you support non-vocational degrees in theory, you’re already supporting them with your pocketbook. If students aren’t getting work that draws on the skills we’ve invested in, our investment is generating a poor return.

Second: Employing graduates stimulates the economy. More than half of Canadian graduates have student debt after graduation. The average postsecondary student debt at graduation exceeds $20,000 in every province (except Quebec). In some Maritime provinces, the average debt is more than $35,000.

Graduates who can’t find meaningful, paying work soon after school are likely to wind up competing for a job that they are over-qualified for simply to make ends meet, failing to acquire useful experience for entry-level work or a future career. This, in turn, make it harder to pay off debt, which lowers their power to spend and stimulate the economy.

Third: If we can’t employ arts graduates, we lose their skill sets and potential.  It’s foolish to confuse non-vocational with unemployable. Employer surveys routinely emphasize qualities such as effective written and verbal communication, teamwork and problem-solving skills as being the most in demand in their workplace.

These are the skills that the arts and humanities instil like no other. Even the most basic university coursework encourages abstract and critical thinking.

I’m actually not persuaded by the first two of these arguments. But more companies should be looking at whether their recruiting practices are failing to deliver optimal results.

The third reason from the Globe article missed an important factor in recruiting from arts and other disciplines: diversity. One of the most common causes of failure at the management level is the absence of sufficiently diverse points of view. Diversity in the employee base helps to create products and services that are relevant and appeal to a wider range of customers.

About 25 years ago, I was looking for a job change. At the time, one of Canada’s big R&D groups would not talk to me – I didn’t have a degree in engineering or computer science.

Fortunately, Bell Labs had a different perspective. It sought people with a wide range of graduate degrees. We had people working on telecom technology who had degrees in music, geography, psychology. The interview process helped determine whether there was a technical aptitude, such as taking apart old radios. The specific discipline that was studied in university was less important than the existence of a graduate degree – evidence of critical and analytic thinking. If the candidate had any kind of technical aptitude, we figured we could teach them how the phone business worked.

Besides failing to consider arts graduates, many companies are not able to read a military resume.

The book Start-up Nation by Dan Senor explores the entrepreneurial success of Israel in creating high performing technology companies. A great deal of attention is paid to the way Israeli executives understand the value of military experience and the inability of many North Americans to value and leverage such a background.

Al Chase told us that a number of the vets he’s worked with have walked a business interviewer through all their leadership experiences from the battlefield, including case studies in high-stakes decision making and management of large numbers of people and equipment in a war zone, and at the end of it the interviewer has said something along the lines of “That’s very interesting, but have you ever had a real job?”

The book quotes John Lowry, a GM at Harley Davidson and a Colonel in the US Marine Corp:

The military gets you at a young age and teaches you that when you are in charge of something, you are responsible for everything that happens . . . and everything that does not happen. The phrase ‘It was not my fault’ does not exist in the military culture. No college experience disciplines you to think like that . . . with high stakes and intense pressure. When you are under that kind of pressure, at that age, it forces you to think three or four chess moves ahead . . . with everything you do . . . on the battlefield . . . and in business.

… The people you are serving with come from all walks of life; the military is this great purely merit-based institution in our society. Learning how to deal with anybody—wherever they come from—is something that I leverage today in business when dealing with my suppliers and customers.

Besides holding a Harvard MBA, Lowry has a Masters in Liberal Arts from Stanford and a Bachelor of Arts in English from Princeton. He has succeeded well beyond the typical career track for an arts grad.

When recruiting for new employees, are you casting the net broadly enough?

My parents discouraged spending endless hours watching TV. It was considered to be “anti-social” to sit in front of the tube. Ericsson has released a study showing that TV viewing is increasingly being accompanied by use of social media, providing kids worldwide with quantitative evidence and a snappy retort to parents who tell the kids to go out to play with their friends. The report, “TV AND VIDEO: An analysis of evolving consumer habits“, finds that TV viewing increasingly accompanied by use of social media. Among the key findings:

• Social TV is exploding – 62 percent of consumers use social media while watching TV. This has increased by 18 percentage points since 2011.
• Consumers are not cutting their traditional TV subscriptions on a large scale – in fact only 7 percent have canceled their TV packages since 2011.
• HD quality remains key – 41 percent of consumers are willing to pay for HD quality. The importance of high-quality images increases on devices with bigger screens such as TVs and tablets.
• Mobile devices are an important part of the TV experience – 67 percent use tablets, smartphones or laptops in their everyday TV viewing, both for video consumption and to enable a social media experience while watching TV.
• TV anytime and anywhere is finally a mass market service – 60 percent of consumers watch video on-demand on a weekly basis. New, easy-to-use services trigger mobile viewing habits.

The report is based on analysis of viewing habits around the world: the US, UK, China, Taiwan, Germany, Spain and Sweden. These are countries with diverse cultural ties to traditional TV, different internet and mobile broadband competitive industry models. As such, the study provides an interesting snapshot of trends in the evolution of multi-screen viewing.

There are many observations in the report worth exploring in greater depth.

Did the CRTC try to telegraph a message to Bell regarding the Astral deal in its approval of the sale of the broadcasting assets of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment? That is a question that Greg O’Brien asked in Cartt.ca last week.

The Cartt.ca article cited two paragraphs from the decision:

54. As set out in Public Notice 1999-97 and Broadcasting Public Notice 2007-53, applicants are generally expected by the Commission to direct tangible benefits to the communities served and to the broadcasting system as a whole. Further, in order to be accepted as a benefit, the proposed expenditure must be incremental to expenditures that would generally be considered ongoing normal responsibilities of the existing licensee.

55. The Commission, in applying its benefits test, has been consistent and rigorous in requiring that (1) expenditures proposed as tangible benefits be truly incremental; (2) such expenditures be directed to projects and initiatives that would not be undertaken or realized in the absence of the transaction; and (3) applicants demonstrate that expenditures proposed as tangible benefits flow predominantly to third parties, such as independent producers.

In my post last month on tangible benefits, I suggested that there is an argument for Bell’s proposal for certain northern broadband upgrades to be considered incremental. And as any of us who watched the Olympics could attest, expenditures for broadband service expansion is indeed providing benefits to the broadcasting system as it evolves from linear over-the-air to the delivery of on-demand across multiple platforms.

So, with regard to items (1) and (2) from paragraph 55, I think that Bell could make an argument – in fact, a convincing argument. It is item (3) that becomes more difficult: that “applicants demonstrate that expenditures proposed as tangible benefits flow predominantly to third parties.”

I expressed concerns about the use of public benefit funds for broadband expansion: “in a multiple service-provider environment, how can the CRTC grant the benefits funding without distorting the competitive landscape?”

Perhaps the broadband expansion funds were placed in the hands of a competitively neutral third party administrator – a kind of broadband contribution fund administrator – for distribution to service providers based on their market share. Alternatively, the funds might be distributed directly to customers of broadband service providers in certain eligible geographic areas, perhaps based on financial need. But this is just tinkering with a program that will deliver benefits to an extremely limited number of Canadian households.

As I wrote last month, “I am still hoping that a major carrier will show the leadership to launch a program for low income households to acquire connected computers. Perhaps this can be a fallback tangible benefits program?”

More than 2 million Canadian households lack a computer, let alone broadband connectivity. These are households in our urban core, not in remote communities. If broadband is important for households in remote communities, why are we not concerned with the embarrassingly large number of households that can’t afford service in our urban centres?

I continue to believe that a Canadian equivalent of the Connect2Compete needs to be launched.

Across Canada, in the next two weeks another school year will get underway.

As parents head out to buy back-to-school supplies, think about the kids who won’t have access to a connected computer for doing homework.

A connected computer in every household with school aged children has to become a national objective.

Despite the prominence of touchscreen smartphones, Nokia released the results of a poll that claims consumers prefer keyboards for input on their smartphones.

Nearly half of the respondents prefer a QWERTY keyboard while only a third prefer a touchscreen. Does this poll indicate a potential upside for RIM?

About two years ago, I asked:

Is RIM hedging its Blackberry bets to extinction?

By offering so many different models and user interfaces for the Blackberry, I wonder if RIM has created too fractured a marketplace for itself – is RIM playing it too safe for its own good?

A year ago, I wrote about data out of the UK that also seemed to be indicating a popularity for physical keyboards.

Personally, I prefer a real keyboard for data entry, but touchscreen for photos, media and web browsing. The Nokia blog acknowledged this: “The touchscreen is fantastic for looking at photos, browsing the web and watching video, but is it really that good for typing?”

There is a crowded marketplace for touchscreen devices. Will Nokia or RIM be able to recapture a sizable share of the market by effectively marrying a traditional physical keyboard with a high resolution touchscreen?

President’s Choice released a new survey this morning on issues for mobile phones and kids. Nearly half of Canadian parents with children aged 11 and older say their kids carry a personal cell phone.

About three quarters of parents are setting rules for their kids to follow:

• 33% said they set ground rules, such as no talking while driving or walking;
• 32% limit use to where it’s appropriate;
• 27% use password protection;
• 18% program emergency contacts into phones and discuss when and how to use them;
• 12% try to conceal their phones in public;
• 9% set parental controls on devices; and
• 8% use GPS to track the whereabouts of family members.

However, a quarter of Canadian parents apparently haven’t set guidelines.

In fact, the survey found there is a gap between the habits that annoy us and those in which we engage ourselves:

• While 86% of Canadians say they are irritated by others typing, texting or calling while driving, nearly a third (31%) admitted having done so themselves in the last year;
• While 77% complained about others not turning off their ringers in public spaces such as theatres or restaurants, approximately 14% acknowledged doing just that; and
• While 57% complained about others texting or talking and not paying attention to their surroundings while walking, 32% admitted to engaging in precisely this behaviour.

“These results show us that for a great number of Canadian parents, it’s a matter of do as I say and not as I do,” according to parenting expert Kathy Buckworth, Chief Family Advisor to PC Financial.

When did you get your kids their first phone?

What rules and tools have you provided to them?