While I am still a bit loopy from pain medications, I thought it would be best to have someone else step in to fill the blog this week. This gem comes from Wendy, our Operations Manager and NPR listener.
As I was driving to work this morning, I heard a reporter on NPR relate the results of a study in which organizations were asked their perceptions of applicants that have held many jobs, or what we used to call in the HR community as “hoppers”. I couldn’t help but consider HR technology’s role in the job fulfillment process and how it supported the study’s findings.
The study set out to analyze how conservative companies are in their hiring and whether the perception of an applicant’s suitability is based on the number of previous jobs held. The reporter outlined two types of applicants: ‘Renaissance’ and ‘Dilettantes’. Renaissance applicants are defined in the study as people who do many things well—think of Thomas Jefferson who painted, played several instruments, was a math whiz, all while serving as Governor. Dilettantes are defined as people who do a lot of things, but not with a depth of knowledge or experience.
A renaissance-type applicant could be mistaken for a dilettante-type applicant. Someone may have a wide variety of job experiences in their arsenal, leading the evaluator giving the resume a passing glance to determine the applicant is a dilettante. However, the skills gained may have been obtained in a manner that allowed the applicant to practice those skills as they went on to the subsequent positions, leading to more of a renaissance characterization.
Conversely, a dilettante could easily be mistaken for a renaissance. Someone may have longevity at one or two companies in multiple positions with great-sounding titles, leading the evaluator to assume the person has gained experience characteristic of a renaissance type. However, the positions may not have allowed for deep knowledge or the person may not have performed well enough to claim a depth of knowledge.
In the business world, recruiters are faced with renaissance and dilettante applicants all the time. It can be a struggle to ensure the resumes they are basing interview decisions on truly reflect the applicants’ suitability. Recruiting software such as SilkRoad and iCIMS can help with the process of initially evaluating applications. In my early years of HR system management, recruiting software was just being released and was touted as the best thing since sliced bread. You could enter a few key words and search the hundreds of applications to find the top 10 resumes based on ‘hit’ scores. The recruiter could then review the resumes and set up interviews with applicants they determined were the most closely-matched. The ability to screen out the truly inappropriate matches (e.g., no work experience at all) was definitely welcomed.
Since the time of those first releases many moons ago, applicants have become even more savvy, interspersing words and key phrases in their resumes that usually pass their resumes through initial filters so that a recruiter will not discard their applications out of hand. Additionally, recruiting software has progressed to scanning social sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook for suitable candidates, allowing companies to proactively contact renaissance people. Many recruiting software companies also enable mass job blasts to specific industry types enabling some level of assurance that the applicants would have the necessary skill. If a company has clearly defined the requirements for the open position and has configured the software to search based on the requirements, some differentiation between applicants may be achieved. Even with all of the advancements in technology, a true determination of whether the applicant is a dilettante or renaissance can only be discovered by talking with the applicant and determining if they truly have the required qualifications to be successful in the job.
The outcome of the NPR-reported study showed that although a lot of companies indicate that they like a breadth of knowledge (a lot of things), it’s more important to them to have employees who have a depth of experience, with those experiences building on each other over time. Technological advances are fantastic and truly save time in the recruiting effort, but technology cannot guarantee a skilled hire. Whether you have a hiring profile that targets renaissance people or dilettante people, however you define them, it is still critical to inject a human component into the search process.
What are your thoughts on renaissance versus dilettante applicants? Which would you rather hire and work with?