e-Skills: Talent or Competency?
Working very closely with the IT recruitment sector over the years I have noticed that there is a strong tendency to focus on competencies when sourcing IT talent. This is in the main driven by the hiring manager of the acquiring organisation.
The beauty of competencies-led recruitment is that it can be distilled down into buzzwords, eg. Java, C sharp, Oracle, Unix. Admittedly these are not competencies as such but they strongly allude to the technical skills required. Now all parties in the supply chain can play buzzword bingo. In other words they can focus on matching terms that appear on both the job specification and the resume. Bingo!
That mindset compartmentalises IT talent acquisition alongside the procurement of say stationery. We need three staplers, twenty pens and two Solaris administrators. As a result IT talent is perceived as a commodity purchase, and so the rules that apply to acquiring receptionists, cleaning staff and security staff are applied.
As outsourcing and off-shoring gain momentum this will become increasingly a non-issue. However there is some way to go before the death of the end user IT function becomes a reality.
Again there is a somewhat patronising belief that IT is largely a manufacturing type function. Feed the IT function requirements and (at some point) out will pop the technical response. Well the reason that doesn’t happen in a predictable manner is because today IT is still partially an art.
A competent artist can create something that is acceptable. A talented artist surpasses expectations. Competent artists typically are easy to manage. Talent artists are the opposite. ( I wrote about this a few years ago in the Financial Times).
It’s the talented IT staff that will take your organisation from good to great. Or given the market conditions, from basket-case to sustainable.
We’ll take a look at what talent means sometime soon in this blog.
In any case, recruiting on competence is not enough. Consequently those involved in the talent supply chain need to raise their games accordingly. Perhaps the first step is to find some talented hiring managers?
@
IT is not an art, it’s a craft.
@
Ade,
Great article – I couldn’t agree more. It strikes me that in most companies there is a huge disconnect in terms of the understanding of the recruiters/hiring managers and the true IT needs of the organization. That said, drawing on something you wrote earlier, this may not be entirely their fault. Where the Head of IT is not a key player at the strategic table, what chance do those serving him, or her have?
@
Thanks Jim for your positive feedback. It’s a very good point. If the CIO is not deemed that high up the pecking order then why should HR make any effort to raise their game in respect of IT talent management.
@
Thanks Mick for your comment. Craft might well have been a better choice than art. Hopefully the point regarding the need to look beyond technical skills came out in my post.
Whilst your point nonetheless states that IT is a craft and not an art, I think it is open to debate. At some point soon I’ll post my thoughts on this and hopefully this will fuel further discussion.