On Fri, 27 Jul 2012, Tony Langdon <vk3jed@gmail.com> wrote:
This is one of my big beefs with not only the education system, but also with the wider working world. There is too much emphasis on one style or way of being, and the problem is not limited to kids. Adult education has similar issues, and don't get me started on employers, where stock standard things such as interviews are an insurmountable barrier for people who would otherwise be able to excel in a niche in the right company.
The general HR processes fail to even assess mostly average people. It seems that small companies are better in this regard because they are more focussed on results. One of my clients seems to have specialised in hiring people who wouldn't fit the corporate HR model and it's worked well for them for 20 years. The thing is that they just want to get the job done, convince the owner that you can do the job and you'll get hired, no credentials needed. Big corporations don't care so much about getting the job done. If they hire someone who doesn't perform then the company will keep going regardless.
The mentality behind these sorts of tests makes me angry. If the education system and the working world made minor adjustments to accommodate people who are different from the "norm", the payoffs would be huge. Not only would there be more people gainfully employed (and paying taxes), but we could have some extremely innovative industries, driven by the diversity and creativity of many unique people.
If the big corporations made minor adjustments to try and run efficiently then the payoffs would be huge. For example there have been a few occasions when I've noticed ways that a company could save some millions of dollars in software or hardware, every time I've mentioned that I've received absolutely no interest from management, they had budgetted to spend a lot of money and there's no need to decrease it. If a company is going to needlessly spend millions on extra hardware or software then needlessly spending hundreds of thousands on extra staff because hiring one person who could do the job properly is too hard isn't going to be a big deal. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/