The distorted reality of job market places

In times of crisis, a brand new TV show in Italy proposes a format with three candidates challenging a permanent job contract.

I wonder who could have been interested in such a program ten years ago.

Job marketplaces are experiencing amazing changes.

If you look at job listing web sites (e.g Monster),  several colourful brand new roles are appearing.

I have been amazed by corporate looking for an :

Innovation Specialist

What kind of job is that? Are they looking for inventors? I’d recommend Leonardo da Vinci to apply for that.

I also read about:

-          Expansion manager

-          Time analyst

-          Android evangelist

-          News Specialist

-          Stage, High potential leader

-          Java Jedi Knight

I’ve wondered whether if I could fit any of these, or at least if I knew someone who could fit.

Would candidate resumes change according to these new openings?

Do they still care about your master degree? Where exactly (in the Universe) is it possible to learn how to become an evangelist, a jedi knight or a “news specialist” (?).

Is there a real need of new market figures able to break the rules of current companies process?

Or is that just a pure attempt from job search web sites for looking more attractive, just dressing common jobs with interesting labels to increase their rank on massive search ranking?

Every change application requires a careful management.

If you need a football forwarder, you would post a “Experienced Forwarder, High Scores required” search.

But if you need Messi, or Ronaldo, would you post for a “Football evangelist”, or “Soccer ball Magician”? Would they recognize themselves?

I think it’s already implied that those top corporates looking for a Java developer would seek for the “Jedi Knight” among their selection.

So what’s the purpose of this naming? If you mean to discourage those who are just “average”, I believe you won’t get the point. Moreover, Jedi Knights normally do not surf job posting web sites.

And providing that those rare people, able to initiate art, revolutions, innovators and rule breakers apply for these openings, will employers be bold enough to give them real opportunities?

So far, “copy and paste” executors have been the preferred choice; what exactly has changed (if so)?

If I try to figure out what an Innovator could be doing on applying for a change, I see him submitting an incubator contest to grab some money for covering start up costs.

Or rather pushing on a vision of the future he is positively obsessed with.

Or trying to sell their brand new online CRM solution, developed during long nights awaken.

Do Apple and Google post searches for innovators?

Companies that choose the innovation way do not look for innovators, as you cannot hire innovators to “possess” them. You can only benefit from innovation, connecting to it, being part of it as a whole, as a business entity.

“Jedi Knights” surfing a job portal have maybe given up their mission and just decided to fight the crowded “clone” battle.

Don’t call us “consultants”

I recently tried to reason on why some colleagues seem to experience a sort of  ”rage” and discomfort in their communication with the company.

Any time an official communication reaches our inbox, they “reply to all” with clear resentment.  In other occasion, they broadcast unpolitely a rude mail which sounds as a “call for company presence feedback”.

Some colleague guessed this could have been a matter of jealousy and rage coming from the “labeling pyramid” that our human resources calls “career path”. In short, a consultant complains for not being a technical consultant, who in turn complains for not being a professional consultant, who complains for not being a senior consultant, or a principal consultant and so on.

This makes sense. But what if the wrong word is consultant, and not the preamble labelling?

In other words the question is: “is it correct to call time&material resources as consultants?” Could this misnomer be the real reason for diffuse murmuring and discomfort?

If we look at consultant target, this can be summarized as a “shot term goal: solving a client issue in order to be paid as much as possible for the shortest intervention time possible”. And I would add “…then move to the next contract asking for higher fees”.

This is a high demanding but also high rewarding mission.

Let’s look now into a (open-ended)time&material rented resource, formerly (or mistakenly) named as consultant? She has a “long term goal:  convincing the client to undefinely procrastinate the contract end, by doing a day by day routine as like a client employee, but a little better in order to be indispensable”.

That said, it jumps out immediately how opposite these focuses are: rapid situation enhancement vs maintaining status quo.

In order to be (partially) immune from this contradictory identity conflict, it is fundamental that every time&material contract is doped with an innovation mission, even if this could mean reducing and not augmenting the required resource number. Which unfortunately won’t help your career jump.

For those who are engaged in repetitive, well established (and com’ on, be honest, also a bit boring) contracts, I would recommend to reconsider the use of “consulting” word, and to not make too distance between what they really do and what’s on the company’s presentation program.

The Importance of Being Earnest

Maemo and Moblin island collision generated a wider Island under the flag of Linux.

Welcome to MeeGo, states the sign at the entrance.

“Com’on guys, let’s merge this way”, and a community grows wider.

For the time being, this is a place accepting only “different” citizens; netbooks, ebooks, special handeld TV devices and so on, in a word the internet devices you wouldn’t call mobile phones (no matter how smart they are). MeeGo is the country of no-phones.

MeeGo is for giving live to the internet tentacles trying to reach your pocket (while smartphones are those stuff in your pocket trying to reach the Internet).

In fact, looking at their site, they carefully call “pocketable” a phone icon.

If you are pocketable media handheld device, then you are in. If you are a smartphone, you are out.

Just a matter of naming.

Telecom Italia CuboVision is a weird enough object to get the passport admitted to MeeGo.

It’s a merge of several things itself.

Lucky him, it’s not a phone.

Vocabulary (or “taking care of what floods out your mouth”)

Someone complaining about how his company hasn’t recognized yet his potential is a LOSER

Someone on his way to a career leap in his company (even if he hasn’t done it yet) is a WINNER

Would you still call it “reading”?

Google Books.

To read or (pre)view?

Vocabulary

At the very beginning it’s mandatory to agree about a common language. Consulting has its own too and anyone would argue about naming to identify roles.

I would propose then a vocabulary. Of course this is a discussion promoting blog. Feel free to support me setting this up.

Consultant: from wikipedia, “a consultant (from the latin consultare means “to discuss” from which we also derive words such as consul and counsel) is a professional who provides advice in a particular area of expertise. [...omissis]  A consultant usually works for a consultancy firm or is self-employed, and engages with multiple and changing client.

I think this clearly defines the role.

Nevertheless, I usually hear about misleading or totally wrong definitions, that varies from a sarcastic slave to the exagerate man I couldn’t leave without.

Other terms wrongly used (IMHO):

Contractor: organization or individual that contracts with another organization or individual (the owner) in order to realize a product.

I think this could be used as a partial definition of self-emplyed consultants who works on production. This is very limiting definition to me that identifies just an aspect from a legal perspective.

 Time& material consultant: To me, this is usurpation of consultant term. This is a fake and a way to discredit thus invalidate the role of a consultant. What is time&material? It’s a way to rename Body Rental. What is body rental? It’s temporary assignment or resources from one company to another. To me this has very little or nothing to do with consulting. Well, they say “Consultants work on projects”

Project: (source PMbok)  temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service or result.

Here it comes! The fact that projects are temporary offered the excuse for the misleading “time&material” confusion.

They intentionally did that. But you won’t