One of the most common complaints from some companies is that they can’t find talent, but on the other hand, when the talent is there, they aren’t willing to pay for it properly either. Certain positions in a company require knowledge and attitude (as well as aptitude, with a “p”). What do you do when someone has the ideal qualities for a position but lacks some of the knowledge? What do you do when that person has the knowledge but we need them to have certain skills?
If we need certain skills in a worker, we train them, full stop. In the same way, if you need someone who has the right attitude and aptitude for a position but lacks some knowledge, you train them. You rarely find the perfect, ideal worker for a position, especially when it involves management or leadership, although there are people who are rough diamonds who just need to be polished properly to bring out everything good they can contribute.
Companies tend to hire workers but don’t tend to invest in their own workers. It isn’t that there’s a lack of talent, but that sometimes there’s corporate incompetence when it comes to developing that talent, a practice that’s very rare in Spain and that gets good results in many other countries.
I read some time ago that US companies that had invested in training their workers had, in the long run, outperformed those that didn’t. Companies that invested in developing professionals got better results over the long term, while companies that went straight for ready-made professionals tended to get their hires wrong more often, and as a result had to waste more time and money on constant recruitment.
If the stock market has undervalued companies with great potential to rise in value over the long term, the job market also has plenty of undervalued talent: young people, and not so young people, who have never had the chance to show what they’re worth. That’s why companies don’t just need a human resources department to choose among thousands of candidates based on their CVs; they need people capable of recognising the talent that other companies miss, as well as continuous training for the employees already on the payroll.
We come back to the solid lines that appear between companies and human resources: sometimes certain requirements are set that the candidate must meet, and if they fail one, they may be ruled out even though they had the attitude, aptitude and knowledge to do the job. Wouldn’t it be better to train them in whatever they’re missing?
In short: a company becomes successful thanks to the group of people who make it up, thanks to those people’s professionalism. The more we invest in developing good professionals, the better professionals we’ll have and the better company we’ll become. When was the last time you made an investment in your workers?
Further reading
- The stigma of long-term unemployment
- 5 ways HR gets fooled into hiring the wrong person
- Job interview etiquette: a protocol for the battlefield
Featured image: Smithsonian Institution, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
