In the words of JL Tezanos:
The world changes faster than people can assimilate.
….The intensity, speed and depth of the changes, contrasts with the way in which many of them are taking place and are being assimilated in an increasingly globalized and intercommunicated world.
A good part of the innovation processes are developed in a way… almost silent,… hardly surprising….
Precisely this silent dynamic will end up leading to millions of people being placed before social conflicts and demands for vital adjustments with unforeseeable effects, with almost no time to understand what has happened.
It is not strange that this confusion, associated with survival, because emotionally the idea of losing a job and becoming someone with an uncertain future is a matter of social life or death, generates great anguish.
And one of the ways in which this anxiety to survive seems to be expressed is the definition of the employee profile desired by companies.
These are some of the conclusions generated from a study by the HAY consultancy regarding the profile most valued by companies in Spain (2012):
Christopher Dottie, general manager of Hays Spain, warns that employers are increasingly demanding when selecting a new worker: “They are looking for the perfect worker, capable of adding value to the company from the first moment.
Organizations value, in this order: adaptation to change (77%), loyalty (63%) and motivation (23%).
Dottie criticizes this attitude of companies: “You want loyal employees, however, motivation is not given special importance, when it is one of the factors that guarantees a positive performance in workers.
Supercandidates are in demand, which seems more like the formulation of a wish than the description of a realistic job profile.
The impression is that in the absence of answers to guide how to survive in the modern, uncertain and complex world, it is necessary to believe in the existence of a super worker who will ensure that the company does not succumb.
They want supercandidates who generate the tranquility that the environment, of course, no longer offers, and against which companies and their managers feel they do not know how to respond.
The above, in addition to formulating unrealizable wishes, defines requirements and issues incoherent messages: the company demands a loyalty that it itself is not in a position to offer: labor flexibility for the bulk of the workforce is today a requirement of business survival.
Or, as the director of Hays Spain warns, how can motivation be relegated as a desired attribute in candidates to a third plane?
The definition of the company's candidate profile seems to be modulated, not only by concrete and conscious business needs, but by an unacknowledged anguish that is made visible through fanciful and incoherent demands.
How can this affect those who go to work? How will it affect the competitive response capacity of companies?
Footnotes:
José Félix Tezanos, «Great trends of the XXI century. Challenges and uncertainties of the XXI century ”in José Félix Tezanos (ed.), Uncertainties, challenges and potentialities of the XXI century: Great international trends, Editorial Sistema, Madrid, 2010, chapter 6, pp. 33-78.
Fte.: http://www.expansion.com/2012/05/31/empleo/mercado-laboral/1338487891.html. Access 03-10-13.
I do not know if it is a "natural" requirement or, rather, an axiom of official economic discourse that no one, except for some "rare" company, disputes.
