Tempest

Wednesday, 27 December 2006

The Professional Vicious Circle

Mr. So-an-so: So what is your daughter doing?
Dad: Masters in Media Management
Mr. So-an-so: Aha so, they have begun to have such courses in India?
Dad: She is studying in London.
Mr. So-an-so: The opportunities children have these days. Such specialisation! In our times management itself was one of the greatest specialisations.
Dad: Yes, now they have management in every field…media, hospitality, medicine…specific to almost every industry.
Mr. So-an-so: Lucky children! Such diverse talents can be tapped into today. So much choice. Such skilled labour the world will enjoy…

Opportunities galore! It’s a whole new world for the youth of today. How tremendously times have changed from the traditional professions of medicine and engineering. Now, even management is becoming a career of the past. Specificities have become the trend of the day. How good can you be at that one minute, narrowed down task? Today, even being a graphics designer is too broad a gambit to be in. New professions are coming up at the rate of birth of children in India. Day before yesterday I met a web grid caricature specialist. No, he can not be called an animations guy because apparently animations can be done outside of grids as well as in the multi-media. Hence, the surmise that perhaps there is a specialist who does animations in grids for multi-media products, one who does animations for multi-media products but does not work on grids, one who does animations only for gaming products and so on and so forth.

What is the one thing you are good at? What is the one thing you can do better than most? What is the one thing you are most interested in? Gone are those days when companies appreciated an all-round person. The style of resumes has changed. The shorter, the better. Bullets. Bullets are the key to everything. ‘Tell me what you got’ is the mantra of the moment. The extras matter, but who are we kidding? Does it really matter whether we did amazingly in debates in school, won medals in basketball, exhibited good leadership qualities? Nope it doesn’t. All that matters is that one skill. Narrow it down. Be specific. Have direction. Many will argue that multi talents are still appreciated. I won’t deny that they are. They are appreciated only if they can be overtly used in the particular profession. (I am not criticising the current trend. I am merely making observations).

And so we march out into various avenues…some into media management (which I have a feeling will be too broad soon…I mean there is TV, internet, multi-media, radio, blah blah), some into investigative journalism (mind you Journalism is way too broad a subject in the 21st century), some will become nose cell surgeons, some will reduce to keyboard servicemen from computer servicemen. Such are the specialisations of today’s time. Thousands of opportunities. Thousands of jobs. Skilled is important.

But in this search for specificity, extreme talent and unparalleled skill are we slowly moving into the arena of unskilled? Are we instead of progressing slowly degenerating? I am working for an absence management firm that makes a record of all absentees in its client companies, sends memos to the managers of these companies that such and such employee has been absent for so many number of days therefore he must be disciplined. This minute division of Human resource management which in itself is a specialisation is today being out-sourced under the pretext of the money the company loses paying absent employees’ sick leave. It does not take into account the excess money being spent on keeping this new company running. It does not require too much skill to do this job other than keen observation, detailed record keeping and iniatiative. Such things have become specifics now. So many such professions are coming up. How skilled are they?

We have been trying to deal with disguised unemployment in the farms in India for years; where 7-8 sons of a farmer till one small little farm and their labour, skill and talent goes waste. Jobs in the commercial industry were looked towards to solve this problem. But without us knowing it the tentacles of disguised unemployment are creeping their way into our skilled corporate worlds.

We have moved in a cycle from the beginning of time from unskilled to skilled to unskilled again. It is yet another vicious circle. History repeats itself. But maybe that is perhaps because the slates are never completely wiped clean.

Labels: corporate culture

Posted by Pavitra :: 06:24 :: 3 comments