{"id":5773,"date":"2012-09-01T14:29:04","date_gmt":"2012-09-01T18:29:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mhgoldberg.com\/blog\/?p=5773"},"modified":"2012-09-02T12:51:39","modified_gmt":"2012-09-02T16:51:39","slug":"are-we-recruiting-well-enough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mhgoldberg.com\/blog\/?p=5773","title":{"rendered":"Is your recruiting smart enough?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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?<\/a>“, by Lauren Friese, the founder of TalentEgg<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n

Leveraging the skills of all Canada\u2019s university graduates should be a top priority, regardless of their area of expertise. The reasons are threefold:<\/p>\n

First:<\/strong>\u00a0we\u2019re all investors in higher education. Whether or not you support non-vocational degrees in theory, you\u2019re already supporting them with your pocketbook. If students aren\u2019t getting work that draws on the skills we\u2019ve invested in, our investment is generating a poor return.<\/p>\n

Second:<\/strong>\u00a0Employing 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.<\/p>\n

Graduates who can\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

Third:<\/strong>\u00a0If we can\u2019t employ arts graduates, we lose their skill sets and potential.\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s foolish to confuse non-vocational with\u00a0unemployable<\/em>. 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.<\/p>\n

These are the skills that the arts and humanities instil like no other. Even the most basic university coursework encourages abstract and critical thinking.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m actually not\u00a0persuaded\u00a0by the first two of these arguments. But more companies should be looking at whether their recruiting practices are failing to deliver optimal results.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0analytic\u00a0thinking. If the candidate had any kind of technical aptitude, we figured we could teach them how the phone business worked.<\/p>\n

Besides failing to consider arts graduates, many companies are not able to read a military resume.<\/p>\n

The book Start-up Nation<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

Al Chase told us that a number of the vets he\u2019s 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 \u201cThat\u2019s very interesting, but have you ever had a real job?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The book quotes John Lowry, a GM at Harley Davidson and a Colonel in the US Marine Corp:<\/p>\n

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\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009and everything that does not happen. The phrase \u2018It was not my fault\u2019 does not exist in the military culture. No college experience disciplines you to think like that\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009with 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\u2009.\u2009.\u2009. with everything you do\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009on the battlefield\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009and in business.<\/p>\n

… 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\u2014wherever they come from\u2014is something that I leverage today in business when dealing with my suppliers and customers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Besides holding a Harvard MBA, Lowry has a Masters in Liberal Arts from Stanford and a Bachelor of Arts in English from Princeton.\u00a0He has succeeded well beyond the typical career track for an arts grad.<\/p>\n

When recruiting for new employees, are you casting the net broadly enough?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 …<\/p>\n

Is your recruiting smart enough?<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","two_page_speed":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nIs your recruiting smart enough? • Telecom Trends<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"An article in the Globe and Mail last week made me question the way many technologies companies recruit employees. 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