The years appear to be getting shorter as life becomes harder for those born pre-1980. Work itself is becoming more challenging as a new era of knowledge workers dominate the higher echelons of the pay scale and the days of heady inventions and apprenticeships leading to lifelong employment are long gone.
People looking for employment in the plus £70,000 pa bracket are looking at fewer and fewer opportunities as companies find it increasingly hard to sell their expensive products to a post-recession set of customers, most of whom have had to go through a lot of cost cutting and restructuring just to stay in business.
As new venture capital backed ideas come to the market, run by technically minded savants who have the idea ‘du jour’ or ‘d’annee’ to try and float the all singing solution into a marketplace that is heavily bruised with the failures and money wasting concepts of the past.
I site everything from the Y2K killer (not) to the rounds of MiFID and Dodd Frank, all of which send the financial institutions into various tail spins, investing heavily to avoid fines and non-compliance, whilst the regulators do little to help their industry recover from the onslaught of massive losses brought on by incompetence, avarice and chasing the almighty buck.
These VC backed companies search around for some technically competent super sales people to work alone in a market apparently ‘rich with opportunity’ for their brainchild. This is the proverbial needle in a haystack, always being searched for yet rarely found.
Somewhere along the line, humanity got lost, the dollar became the god of small things and every compass pointed toward the fake money north as the true and ultimate destination.
As in the early 1900’s when copywriters were replaced with printing presses, and much later in the car industry that replaced body fitters with robot arms, these steps of progress, although painful and destructive to current incumbents, ended up bettering society. As will the innovators of today with their fit for purpose inventions lead to a better economy and state of wellbeing for the masses, the means to take these innovations to market remain mired in pre-trained front line staff and an aversity to risk on the part of wiley purchasers.
Thus, the re-structuring in today’s markets will facilitate progress towards an egalitarian society where everyone gets a fair crack of the whip and the precious few insiders don’t get a leg up before the masses. However, there is going to be a lot of pain in the short term, with financial service software vendors, banks and other financial institutions taking the brunt of cost cutting and job slashing, before this comes to pass.
In all, this has led to the creation of the journeyman. As each of these companies struggle to find a person that can make them some money, they strip through reams of front line people looking for the unicorn that can turn the tide of recession and at the same time make their 60% fit product appear to the customer as their dream come true. Leaving in their wake talented sales staff discarded for their inability to change the environment in which they find themselves. The vendors themselves are left with politicians that understand how to avoid the compromise axe by appearing to be indispensable.
This seems neither possible nor plausible with people trained in current and past technology. Vendors need to understand that the rules have changed and that instead of trying to find the sales person who can twist your software plot to the extent that it fits the needs of a potential client, they should focus more on R&D to make the product fit for today’s market needs, and not legacy requirements from a bygone set of needs.
Therefore the search for the unicorn is a fruitless one that lowers potential good fit candidates’ self-esteem, frustrates employers as they try to search for the elusive person to fit the model they have firmly fixed in their mind, and in the middle of it all, you have recruitment agencies trying desperately hard to thoroughly understand the perfection the client is looking for and helping the candidates to shine in the areas where their experience is relevant to the requirements for the position. Then, picking up the pieces as the candidate comes away disillusioned when he/she is rejected at first interview stage, even though on paper they look like a great fit.
For candidates, the old sales adage, ‘People buy people, not products’ could not be truer in the search for your next career move, sometimes the most unlikely skillsets get hired purely on the basis that the hiring manager was in a good mood and the person had a personality and demeanour that seemed to fit the ideal that the manager was looking for at that time, nothing they could elucidate or even put into coherent sentences, but nonetheless, certain people just seem to fit, regardless.
Therefore, job searchers carpet bomb companies with their CVs and some less responsible agents do the same based on Boolean word searches, rather than an in depth understanding of both the client’s needs in their new employee and the candidate’s needs in his or her career progression, responsible and ultimately successful people broker will thoroughly understand the client’s requirements for their newest member of staff and equally thoroughly understand the career and goal aspirations for their candidate to effectively match one with the other. The element in short supply for this successful solution is time.
So, the conundrum is set, and it amounts to a best fit scenario given the restrictions in place in all three parts of the equation. There is a less than perfect flow of information from all parties, there is a less than perfect element of complete truth from all three parties and there is a less than perfect desire to compromise on various elements to achieve a best fit.
In this day of knowledge workers, sales people, and innovators, it pays to understand that unicorns don’t exist, however, a few frogs may turn into princes with a gentle embrace.
The Journeyman 