We have all learned that human beings demonstrate social behaviour; we interact, communicate and unlike our co-inhabitants of the earth, we have the ability not only express immediate hunger, fear or happiness, we can relate abstract thoughts as well. Since the emergence of internet the world has become a small place. While the beginning of our on-line activities was fairly limited, nowadays we have - not surprisingly - social platforms; where we can interact with people we have in reality never met, yet the interaction is direct enough, though virtual.
In school we are being encouraged to give well founded presentations, to give input in order to improve the strength of the group (team) and social networks and blogs have provided a provoking tool to express our thoughts. Seems to be a wonderful world. Until you enter world of professionals...
In many encounters with HR, I have noticed an alarming trend, where companies seem to have lost touch with human beings; respectively their workforce. When I come to a job interview, I must be able to recite correctly answers (many times to predictable standard questions). One flaw, and I will be labelled insecure. When interviewed, I am expected to dress a certain way, sit a certain way, gesture a certain way, answer a certain way, and so on. In short - the candidate must become a uniform mass produced servile product, which easily fits into the categories.
Recently, I have encountered a company, despite the fact that they were desperately in search of a certain candidate, they have rejected half the city population, but not being able to indicate their exact requirements. 95% of the candidates were perfectly fit for the job, yet for misty reasons, the HR person was not capable to make a choice (in the meantime, the vacancy was not filled, and logically this is not advantageous to the operational ability of the company... ).
One cannot be but profoundly amazed and wonder, what is it that companies are indeed looking for? Merely cheap workforce, without the slightest imagination, submissive enough to be moulded according to the company's mindset? Then where is the potential strength that we are so encouraged during our education years?
Perhaps the market is still bad(ish) but there will come a point, where the companies could suddenly be faced with a crisis of a different kind; flexible and creative thinkers, who can make the vital difference whether the company will survive or not. We are social beings, but in our HR-world the workforce is sadly enough treated as an expense, not as an asset, and all our human treats that are in fact added value are becoming rather liabilities.
About time to take a step backwards and rethink which way we have chosen to go...
