Organizations hire executive recruiters, like me, to find employees with very specific skill sets to fit wonderfully precise job descriptions. Hiring officials list and analyze the tasks that make up a job, study the attributes of people who have been successful doing the job, and then develop meticulous hiring criteria based on their analysis. I certainly do not fault this approach because accomplishing their expectations is my profession, but a word of caution may be appropriate.

When we conscientiously match candidates to some of those criteria for today's jobs, we actually are hiring based on yesterday's needs. Today's fast changing technologies and fast developing management sciences may guide us to consider some alternative parameters in hiring our technical specialists and particularly in selecting management talent, to avoid building in obsolescence.

But how, you ask, are we to hire employees who can do today's job and also are equipped for tomorrow's - a job we haven't seen? Alan Downs, a management consultant and industrial psychologist, suggests there are four key skill areas that can be assessed in today's candidates to determine the likelihood of success in tomorrow's jobs. These areas are: BROAD TECHNICAL KNOWLEDGE, ORGANIZATIONAL COMPETENCIES, MANAGEMENT SKILLS and LEARNING SKILLS. Let us consider these areas in more detail.

BROAD TECHNICAL KNOWLEDGE can be observed in the following examples:

• Rather than hiring the best narrowly focused specialist at a particular manufacturing engineering job, you look for a manufacturing engineer who is well grounded in many approaches to manufacturing.
• Rather than hiring a planner who is just well versed in your specific MRPII system, a better choice may be an individual with good MRP knowledge and a keen awareness of the role systems can play in management decisions.
• Rather than hiring a buyer who has purchased your specific set of commodities, look for a strategic thinking and performance oriented, but more generally professional buyer.

ORGANIZATIONAL COMPETENCIES requires you to analyze your own company's core competencies - key areas where the organization provides value to the customer. For instance, some companies are known for making extremely reliable products, some for being the lowest priced, some for having the fastest turnaround, some for having the friendliest service and some for producing the most technologically advanced gadgets. By hiring people whose skills and attitudes are consistent with your company's core competencies, you increase the likelihood that these individuals will adapt to the company's future needs.

MANAGEMENT SKILL - the ability to manage the work, is one thing that will not likely change in business while many others will. In interviewing, it is always a good idea to ask specific behavioral questions about people and projects the candidate has managed in the past. How was a tight deadline met? How was a particularly stressful situation handled? How was a problem employee coached?

Even for an inexperienced candidate, there are ways to evaluate potential in management skills. Is the resume organized in a clean, efficient and focused way, or is it a hodgepodge of personal information, much of which has little to do with the person's ability to do the job? Look at how the candidate has managed the information flow in the interview. Has the candidate come to the interview prepared?

LEARNING SKILLS denotes the willingness or motivation to learn. Employees who have these skills are more likely to adapt and learn as their jobs change. People with good learning skills are able to flex and grow to ensure their own success and the success of the organization.

For clues about learning skills, you might review a candidate's career. Has the career path been linear (all in one well-defined line of work) or like a spiral (with some linear moves that have expanded his repertoire of experience)? Are there signs of continuous learning? Without a desire to learn and the skills to do so, the employee of the future will be trampled by the pace of change.

Alan Downs' recommended approach to candidate selection builds into the organization the capacity for change. As long as we continue to hire narrowly skilled specialists for precisely defined jobs, we run the risk of pushing the organization into talent obsolescence. The days of static job knowledge, skill and abilities are gone forever. The rapid pace of change demands that organizations be staffed with employees who can respond to the challenge.

Jon Harvill CPC, APICS Employment and Recruitment Coordinator, can be contacted at 770 952-0009.