Thinking Talents for Tommorow.

Are we desperately seeking to find tailor made talent for tomorrow’s world?


Finding tailor made talents in today’s fast evolving business is getting to become a huge challenge to business managers. This in my view is part a symptom of static expectations and mindset of both hiring managers and career seekers.

Markets are getting redefined every day and customers are making their decision to choose products or services dynamically. More than ever before external environment is forcing businesses to alter their business models and approaches. In short new patterns of thinking are being put to test. Innovation mantras are powering this very agenda.

While this is happening at a macro level the chieftains in charge of the human resources in most enterprises are typically hiring based on preset stereo types and profiles defined by a bygone era or on the mandates set by LoB which again have not stayed in tune with the corporate innovation mantras. Why adopt “best practices” used by corporations in the past to engineer your corporation of the evolving tomorrow. Don’t we agree that the today’s “Next Practices” will be the tomorrow’s “Best Practices”!

Worse is when the talent acquisition happens when hiring managers and recruiters bring in their personal biases. They use metrics to evaluate candidates those that made them succeed in the past. Little said the better about personality clashes or race/gender and personal biases.

The talent attraction mandates will benefit by being in tune with the demands of managing markets and customers of today and future. The management talents available in the markets today are either from Ivy League colleges or from companies which have done well in the past decade. Therefore could be improbable to expect ready to fit - tailor made managers and hence not find an exact fit to the prescribed job description by the spin doctors at human resources and LoB’s.

Evaluation of a candidature should be rather on what a person could deliver in line with the corporate future mandates rather than introspect deeply into fitment based on past experiences.

How else would you explain that future market makers like “Google” “Toyota” and “Apple” are winning precious cream of the talents from the yesteryear beleaguered behemoths like “Microsoft” “ Ford” “GM” “Time Warner” and “Sony” ?

Another area which needs vigorous traction is an area that I believe will lend a great deal to the much needed lateral thinking. Cross Industry pollination of management talents?






Imagine a world where –
• Toyota’s quality managers are in charge of software development teams.
• Wal-Mart and Amazon’s retailers are working at promoting “Retail Banking” and selling Insurance services.
• Intel Managers are building the cars for Tatas, Toyota, GM and Ford.
• Apple’s Design engineers are thinking and managing the conception and use of unconventional energy resources to power any thing from automobiles or domestic appliances.
• Infosys and Wipro’s executives managing global sourcing, assembling and delivery from concepts to products charters of drug discovery process and CRO effort at Pfizer, P&G and Dr.Reddys.
• Google visionaries working on deployment of compute powers to unravel genomics or translating “Pure Mathematics” to “Practical applied sciences”
• Formula 1 engineer deployed to work on “Data Centre Cooling” projects.

Some of these examples may surprise you. However I am willing to articulate why I think so. The point is the talents have multiple application , if only we cared to manage their deployment with an essence of lateral thinking.

Moreover could we focus on some of the points to consider while evaluating a talent?

• Is there a learning ability displayed?
• Does the person exhibit an adaptation or learning?
• Is there a passion exhibited to contribute and create?
• Is there an aptitude managing the 3 C’s available?
• Culture, Creativity and Change!!
• Will the person graduate progressively in the “leadership pipeline”

Before which isn’t it better if more time is spent on thinking, strategising, envisioning and articulating the “Job” or “Role Description”. Won’t it help if the contours of the search assignments are deliberately kept mildly fuzzy at the borders with open-endedness?

Companies for tomorrow are innovating themselves every day.

Could the new brand of innovative thinkers and execution managers redefine the way we attract, engage and manage talents? Can we change the way we treat the talent acquisition and management process?

For organisations building enterprises for tommorow..Finding Talents to find talents is in itself a critical search..Are we ready as yet to identify people for this specialised function?

Enough and more of - Recruiters and Job Hoppers !!!

Too often it seems that recruiters and hiring managers are obsessed about the number of jobs that their potential candidates have changed. It is almost alluding to a universal truth scripted by them that "The most precious talent in planet earth is the candidate who hasent changed any jobs" ...................

Are we then living in a world were the powers those are at corporates managing talent acqusition mandates carving the writing on the wall inscribing "Thou shall not dare to change your jobs..lest ...you do ....you shall be a sinner"

* Think about it ..the globalisation has spawned multiple businesses and many myraid sub set of econonies those that create abundant jobs which cannot be filled by university graduates.

* The same globalisation impact swings from Americas to Europe to the Asia Pacific world as downturn and boom time sway markets periodically. Did we know that with each downturn there are lay offs( forced attrition) and each boom time there are massive talent acqusition drives.

* Allmost all of us agreed that people dont leave companies , rather they leave managers !!!!

* And the human tendency to look for greener pastures ..( I mean more money,job satisfaaction, change in environment et al)

* and this is my bias ..More and more ..no more is a day that is going to dawn when employees will be seeking employers rather than employers waging a slugfest to attract the right talents..

( the employer is more desperate today to hire a talent and has a shortage of choices rather than the potential employee desperate to have A particular job and he has so many options!!!!)

* Did we also hear the latest corporate buzz word "Talent Engagement" along side "Talent Acqusition"..engaging the knowledge worker et al? Isnt it therefore a truth that the last company has lost the candidate rather than thinking that candidate has moved over???

* Of all that we hear about jobs from US being shifted to US to India or other offshore destinations . No one is yet aggressive complaining that India is facing a brain drain of the human capital. And the talents are employed to increase the productivity of the western world instead of their home land..


* and we could write many more seemingly objective point such as those cited above to create a compelling foundation of bias..particularly since i personally have changed half a dozen jobs..!!!


* and then the MONSTERS and their allys ( the breed of search and selection firms ) who are headhunting like there is no tommorow ..displacing stable candidates to other companies with the lure of big bucks and perks only to return to then later to repeat the excercise again ..are candidates going to complain about higher welfare...

Isnt it time for the recruiters and hiring managers to have a holistic view and tolerance to the job hops , skips and jumps rather than finding holes in the so very scarce talents available in the market. Isnt it time they only focussed on why they are talking or considerign the candidate in the first place ( talents, expereince , competitive info and other merits )

obviously ..no one is so motivated to just for the heck of it jump jobs..just for the kick of it..imaging sane men doing this ?

the fact that the talent gets repeatedly hired is a credible qulity in itself.and then the last hiring manager did hire him/her or the next hiring manager would hire him/her !!!!!

If the hardliners dont change then probably in times to come they will ONLY have a rich pool of university graduates to hire from ..as more than ever before they are bound to contend with caandidates who on a average would have changes atleast 5-6 jobs over a decade...else they staff their companies with robots and automate their staff with command and control

Paradoxically .....
did i hear some one saying that the people who stay long periods in a company are not highflyers and mediocre performers whom the hiring managers dont want to touch ?????

INSTEAD CAN WE EXPECT THE HIRING MANAGERS AND RECRUITERS TO FOCUS THEIR 20 % EFFORT TO EVALUATE THE CANDIDATURE ON TRUE MERIT AND THE REST 80% ON RETAINING THE PRECIOUS TALENT......ELSE THEY MAY GO JOB HOPPING AGAIN!!!!!

think diffrently ...

New Economic Powercenters

The time magazine some time back ran a cover story with a catchy title called Ny_Lon_Kong. The summary was that of how important these three cities were at being power centers energising global economy.

I could agree that this was an American publication and hence they may have a bias.

The economic power centers have long moved away from be controlled by the financial districts at the super cities of New York, London and Honkong.

Today it the Shanghai,Mumbai,Moscow,Berlin,Paris,Singapore,Sydney,Sau Paulo and the several cities in the oil rich middle east driving the economies of the world in many ways seeding the growth engines for the world tomorrow.

Alternative thinking of the worlds power centers could be the countries consuming the products and services. Though the Americas and the European countries may be leading in consumptions the sheer pace of consumer spends in the Indian Subcontinent, ASEAN countries , Brazil and Russia and China is far grater than the growth in US and Europe.

My thoughts have a bias from the fact that the world is gravitating to being a pluralistic entity. The worry is are the erst while superpowers willing to let go the staus quo which once served their purpose of prosperity.

More than the above the capital which will play a huge role in the world tomorrow is that of "Culture Currency" with out these obviously the globalisation agenda is hallow.



Shared Wealth , Share Power and Well Being for all is the way forward. I am looking to build consensus on the above points. The dialogue is beginning to gain traction at many forums..this is one such effort to contribute to the cause