Who would Freud choose to work with us?
Or the headache of a head of human resources.
Freud tried to find a solution for the neurotics, he insisted on finding the sources of their conflicts, those dark events strongly guarded in the unconscious that were transformed into "repressed impulses".
But a lonely head of human resources in a company (faced with so many puzzles) has the great challenge of finding talent among the prospects of a sea of candidates who guard their human conflicts very well.
Knowing who is who becomes a headache for a talent management specialist. What if you can avoid the tests? Which is better the technical filter or "the eye of the master fattens the horse"?
Freud, the great Austrian psychiatrist, author of the psychoanalysis, delved after the surprising "failed acts" that produced confusion in his patients. A momentary “circuit break” that makes me doubt what I want, what happens to me, and therefore, what I want to say.
But once visiting a head of human talent from a large company, I saw him wrapped in great uncertainty, his face expressing intense agony and looking anxiously at some papers.
I don't know, he said, without me asking him what was wrong with him. I don't know what I have in front of me, and on top of her desk was nothing less than a long resume of a girl with an intelligent face and a very white complexion.
What do you see? I asked him. I don't know, the rictus on his lips. Phew… I expressed, do not tell me that the curve of its reddish bells makes you hesitate.
It makes me doubt everything, he said. It's about fear of what I call the "perfect deception of a resume."
How to know that behind that beautiful stamp is the person I need, he told me, adding: the resume is unforgiving, that is what worries me the most.
What do you suspect behind the suggestive image of that young woman?
Ufffff…. she exclaimed, that when the unconscious comes out it's late, I have her sitting between us and she has to be attended to.
Do you mean Freud? Yes, to neurotic impulses, he explained, the repressed events that one day explode and create situations that are not easy to handle.
What my friend was dealing with was the combination of two public figures. One external and the other deeply associated with certain events housed in the unconscious and reflected in momentary contradictions.
The same thing happens with people who take communication courses. They come with a character marked by old events that have become insurmountable conflicts and if we manage to transform them they would display a new energy: that is to say, they have become public figures free of those old deep pressures.
It takes an American businessman six seconds to read a resume, which means that he does not read it, that he does not believe him, that it is useless to him. It is a formal procedure. I have it, now I want to see you, he says inside.
Behind come the tests, the sieves, the suspicious gaze, the comparison with another that looks like that person, the famous intuition, in short, a chain of unknowns that ultimately leads us to this crucial conclusion: I'm not sure until not in your position and giving results.
How to find true human talent behind a smile or at the end of a long chain of cold, mechanical, massive, technological filters, human strainers and machines.
So, before leaving the office, the last sentence of my chief human resources friend was a lapidary question: Who would Freud choose if he were among us?
