Many years ago, a Europe based
client in the infrastructure domain gave us a list of “desirable attributes”
for a candidate for the position of COO. Among them were- a given number of
years of experience and seniority, leadership skills, specific knowledge of
niche technology etc. Among the first 2 or 3 candidates that we presented to
them, was a lady with much fewer years of experience but having, what I thought
was, adequate team handling experience and all the other skills which I
understood would be necessary for the job at hand. The client however matched
her in their own internal, and should I add, international parameter tool- a
technology they were using for some years, across the board, in every country
they operated. All my efforts to have them see sense fell on deaf ears. For
months we tried to give them a solution which matched all their criteria but
somehow did not fit into their indian remuneration brackets.
After about 6 months of desperate
searching, I again insisted that they revisit the first lady. Something told
me, she was “the one”. This time, she was interviewed by some other people too
and they decided she was the right fit, tech or no tech. So, all was well that
ended well. But this gave rise to this thought in my mind. Is technology over
riding the role of plain vanilla intuition as far as recruitment is concerned?
But here is the catch. Intuition
is never plain vanilla. It is the effect of years, indeed, decades of
knowledge, experience, and sheer hard work. Only we call it ‘intuition’ because
we cannot really follow the pattern of the mind as it analyses gigabytes of
data in our brain.
We see it all the time in nature
and our surroundings. One pertinent and rather sad example is from the
devastating tsunami which lashed the shores of Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India
in 2002. It was seen that some tribes of the Andaman Islands could escape the
waves since they had moved to higher land in time. When probed, it was realized
that they had relied on traditional wisdom and had heeded the warning of the
birds and animal behavior and had moved. However, those so called more
developed areas, where technology was present but still not used to that
extent, people relied on it, and had been dulled into the state of mind which
didn’t allow their intuition to dictate their moves. Is it true then that
technology makes us forget our natural ability to follow our intuition? What
about the West now waking up to the fact that Asians are more adept at
mathematical calculation and do much better in school and aptitude tests simply
because they did not depend on calculators in school? And how does this
dichotomy of technology and intuition relate to our workplaces?
Especially in hiring, intuition
has time and again proven to be that something which goes beyond the framework.
A successful hiring is not just about the educational qualification, or years
of experience or about the number of people led, nor is it just about the
technological knowledge of the incumbent. These are important, but what makes a
person successful in a company in the long run is what we call the “right fit”.
That is a combination of the attributes of culture, character, communication
and how they interact with others. And this is something which technology
cannot determine. There are a lot of psychometric tests today which can go a
long way in getting a fair idea about the characteristics of a person but
turning it all into data. It works in most cases. Yet, the human brain has the
capability to understand and process tiny movements of muscle along with words
and actions, which, say, for a very good candidate on paper, may say “something
is not quite right”. And that “not quite right” finally turns out to be a false
CA certificate, as was the case with one of our hirings for a CFO for a hotel
group.
Many arguments have been made on
the greatness of intuition, case in point being ‘Blink’ by Malcolm Gladwell,
but his examples only goes to strengthen this point- great intuition only comes
from great experience.
There is also talk of, if too
much technology may be harmful for the business. Recently a manufacturing plant
upgraded their computer processors for better speed and spent more than Rs 40
lakhs for the same. However the plant workers uses simple spread sheets and
databases, so this up gradation was wasteful expenditure. Technology is only
valuable if it can make your business faster or better or make more money. In
fact, where you make use of technology itself is up to the gut feeling of the
manager in charge!
Intuition may also be a bad weapon
in the hands of a bad hiring manager. Only a person with years of experience in
handling both sides of the table- the client and the candidate- can make these
very subtle distinctions and catch the nuances. Today with the advent of
technology in the social sphere in the form of networking sites which are being
used in almost every company for their hiring purposes, it becomes even more
important for the screening process to be even more stringent. Ironically, this
screening is best done by an experienced head hunter, who, I dare say, can
easily separate the wheat from the chaff, even from a linkedin.com or a
monster.com!
My view is that which intuition
is infallible and will always be, it has now found a good partner in
technology. Intuition is good in the hands of a person
who second guesses, doubts himself and searches for data to validate his or her
decision. One must remember that intuition also comes from the mistake one
makes throughout ones career. Therefore, a wise person will not only use his or
her gut feeling to make a decision but will also corroborate this decision with
proper analysis and use of data. Intuition followed mindlessly can become
dangerous for the company as well as or the person.
Jyorden Misra
Re-worded in parts for reproduction by Payal
Jyorden Misra
Re-worded in parts for reproduction by Payal
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