Are you selling yourself short?

I've spent a significant amount of time trying to hire in India lately and here are my personal observations, maybe my sample set is poor or maybe there is a wider problem:

Almost all resumes and associated candidates I come across seem hell bent on defining themselves as narrowly as possible. I get an avalanche of technical jargon that’s supposed to impress me with the candidate's knowledge and not much else. Ignoring for a moment that even this supposed knowledge is usually heavily embellished, there is almost no emphasis on their wider selves.

Who is the person behind all the technology speak? What drives you? What motivates you? What is the special attribute that will make you an asset when the technology landscape inevitably changes? What makes you interesting? Are you trustworthy? Do you have emotional intelligence? Do you know how to lead? What are your goals? What is the culture you're comfortably with? What are your values?

Almost no one is even prepared to have that conversation. Even more alarmingly, almost no one seems to be interested in introspecting along those lines. I see a mad dash to a great looking resume' and little else.

Perhaps it’s driven by poor hiring practices that place far too much weight on technical know how and ignore other, more important attributes. Unfortunately, all you get by following that selection criterion is a shell of a person who is not well rounded, cannot adapt or respond to new challenges and perpetuates poor culture in the organization. Sound familiar?

Comments

Ujwal said…
Very well put. My conversation this morning. Why do you want to restrict yourself? The worth is not in what you know. The worth is in what you can know and how. Let's see. For us is to do.

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