Our backyard has not been designed in any special way. We planted trees where we wanted to have them, not too close to the house, we added bushes where they seem to be in a right spot, we thought of colours, but not too much. It was a project without being a design project.
Birds are happy. Sparrows were first to colonize our backyard. Then robins came. Then cardinals and mourning doves. And goldfinches. And a robust flock of blue jays (a dozen). And… we had to buy a few books. We unearthed long time forgotten binoculars. And, last year, hawks and falcons (sparrows are not happy with them, obviously). These beautiful killers make us understand what contradictory thoughts are.
We think that the very presence of birds of all stripes suggests that the backyard project without a project works. Sparrows yell at hawks, hiding in the bushes, starlings yell at sparrows, cardinals mingle with mourning doves and blue jays yell because it’s their nature. Sometimes it’s fun, sometimes it’s sad. Anyway, birds’ approved backyard.
“They want a robot, not a human to do this job. And yet, they want me to be creative. You know this sexist joke? A CEO wants to hire a 20 years old blonde assistant with 40 years of experience…” – said a friend who started looking for a job and got surprised by job offers.
With resumes updated recently, we decided to put ourselves in our friend’s shoes and started browsing job offers. An analyst is supposed to be creative, hence “research analyst” as a key word. We came to the same conclusion as our friend: many companies want to accomplish a mission impossible challenge. They want people creative 24 hrs a day doing a number of tasks impossible to fit in an 8 hours working day. Many job offers look like conceived by an artificial intelligence that lacks intelligence. They want you to be creative, perfect, advanced, creative thinker with excellent communication and diplomacy skills, in a work that requires social skills and a hermit/lone wolf dedication to voluntary solitary confinement and individual work.
“AI is already there” – laughed a friend who, let’s put it this way, is in this business. However, two friends’ opinions are not statistically relevant, so we decided to check intuition and insights against numbers.
Key findings:
Responsibilities and skills’ spooky entanglement
– No matter the size of the company, there is always a turning point when the number of responsibilities starts growing but is not followed by an adequate increase in number of skills required, as if the number of responsibilities wasn’t based on skills past a certain level.
– There is also a “key responsibilities are… but not limited to” part that is one of key expressions replacing a more direct description, i.e. long hours of work.
How to find creativity in numbers?
The initial assumption was that the higher the degree of creativity required, the more precise and/or longer is the description of coveted skills but at the same time the number of daily tasks for creative people would be lower (second part of the initial assumption): creativity needs time.
This assumption has gotten confirmed but, interestingly, the understanding of this entanglement is not widely shared. Some companies seem to realize that creativity doesn’t respond to a buzzer, but this is not a common knowledge, despite existing scientific research on this topic.
How the creativity is defined by employers?
It is not. Sometimes it’s just “creativity”, sometimes it’s accompanied by its synonyms (problem solver, critical thinking, outside-the-box thinking and so on). But is it definition or just pleonasm, like “burning fire” or “buttery butter”? Sometimes “creativity” seems to be perceived as creativity in multitasking, not in finding new solutions/ideas. In both cases “creativity” is another key word that is not being defined and is dangerously close to the “it’s, you know.”
The “excellency” in skills, never defined.
Another key word, never defined: excellency. The lack of the definition could be a symptom of perfectionism and if it is the case, bonjour tristesse (if you like French litterature and Françoise Sagan) and welcome to the neurotic personality of our time (for Karen Horney’s fans). Is our economy in a neurotic state of mind?
Last but not least: are they jobs for robots or for humans?
The degree of micromanaging suggests employers’ control issues so to speak, and algorithm generated job offers. Or at least they look like (very unsophisticated) algorithm generated. It leads to questions on what AI related “inbreeding” is in the economy and how – already – it affects the future.
This study is based on an analysis of 100 job offers posted on LinkedIn website between September 9th and October 15th 2021. “New” means jobs posted within last week as on the moment of downloading data. No company has been used twice for the purpose of this analysis. Job offers were in English or/and in French. Companies/universities/research entities/institutions are divided into four groups: A: no more than 200 employees (27 postings) B: 200-1000 employees (20) C: 1000-5000 employees (25) D: 10,000 employees or more (24) and 4 job offers with no information on the size of the employer
1. Responsibilities and skills’ spooky entanglement:
More skills/less responsibilities and more responsibilities/less skills paradox.
responsibilities vs skills
We compared the lengths of lists of responsibilities and lists of skills/requirements to see if there are patterns that would tell a story. The respective numbers of responsibilities and skills/education equal to the number of bullets in descriptions, or the number of sentences describing the job offer, or both sentences and bullets numbers if both used. Numbers for responsibilities and skills for each job offer stay in initial pairs, as listed.
No matter the size of the company, if numbers of responsibilities are compared to corresponding numbers of skills in a job offer, they follow 3 patterns. The median number in skills is 10 (13 per cent).
1. Less responsibilities/typical daily tasks means usually more skills required (left side of the X-axis), if the number of responsibilities is no bigger than 9, the number of skills is usually 3 to 13 (a few outliers there) – (55 per cent of employers).
This seems to confirm the initial assumption that some employers that want to hire talented and creative people don’t bury their creativity under the burden of daily tasks.
2. When the number of responsibilities is between 10-13, the number of skills is usually within 10-14 range (23 per cent).
3. But when numbers of responsibilities start increasing and are within 14 – 27 range (one outlier with 64 and redundancies in description), there is another distinct pattern: numbers of skills don’t follow (with few exceptions). The numbers for skills stay on the same level as for the 2nd cohort. It’s the case of 22 per cent of employers.
“Fake creativity” requirement? To make a company look nicer? As if about 20 per cent of companies would hire creative people for the sake of doing more daily routines. As if “creativity” would rather be about multitasking, not finding new solutions.
responsibilities– blue skills – red A: 200 employees or less B: 200-1000 employees C: 1000-5000 employees D: 10,001 employees & more
2. How to look creative?
The number of responsibilities seems to follow a wave pattern, as if growing numbers of skills were generating an expected higher number of responsibilities (logical to a certain point), until the company cannot add more responsibilities to its creative employees. After a peak, numbers of responsibilities are down, and then increase again, till the next peak and so on. Interestingly, when numbers grow, the “ebbs and flows” are shorter.
skills vs responsibilities
It seems to suggest that the peak in numbers of responsibilities (but not in skills) could indicate companies that don’t have any idea how to face new challenges/redefine themselves/don’t want to redefine themselves, so instead they multiply responsibilities. As if saying “look how hard we work and you will too”. But it’s just a hypothesis. This type of employers are mostly banks, real estate brokers, education institutions.
There is an interesting group of employers “after the peak” that can be identified only on longer series of data, because short series of data look very random. After the peak in number of responsibilities there is usually a drop whilst the number of skills stays the same and then slowly starts increasing as if employers were saying: looking for new ideas, giving people time to find them.
There is no clear “after the peak” tendency in the size of the company. However it looks like mid-size and big employers seem to struggle more often trying to define a path to their future than small (less than 200 employees) employers and are in need of bigger changes more often.
3. The modern slavery of “key responsibilities are… but not limited to”.
The median number of responsibilities in job offers is 9. Then comes a catch: “key responsibilities are but not limited to.” About 60 per cent of job offers come with this notice.
It has different names: range of tasks including (suggesting that there are other tasks), primary responsibilities (so there are secondary), other duties may be assigned, other reasonable duties and responsibilities assigned, duties and responsibilities will include but not limited to, some evening and weekend work will be required, undertakes other related duties as assigned, willingness to undertake unfamiliar tasks from time to time as required, multitasking, fast-pace environment and so on. In French it’s usually très grande disponibilité, cette personne doit faire preuve de souplesse, pour une description des taches détaillée veuillez visiter un lien suivant…
Who is more willing to impose on their new employee a non defined number of additional responsibilities?
– The median group is 10 companies (9 responsibilities defined). Seven of ten companies are telling the job seeker: we want you to work more than you initially might think.
– 45 companies are in the cohort requiring a smaller number of responsibilities and 55 per cent of them declare that they want their new employee to be aware that their work will be… but not limited to,
– The cohort of companies listing 10 or more responsibilities is 45 and 62 per cent of them want their employees to undertake additional tasks.
There is no clear correlation between the size of the employer and the “as assigned” notice.
However smaller employers seem to abstain more often from adding undefined tasks.
“as assigned” work
Longer series of data would make the interpretation more decisive but it seems safe to say that companies that make the list of tasks shorter are statistically more aware of what they want from their employees and don’t hide behind a smoke of “willingness to undertake”. It is difficult to meet the expectations of an employer who doesn’t know what they want so for example a further research on how often employees leave companies so fond of multitasking, would be interesting.
Quantify the qualities was a challenge but we think we are not wrong measuring lengths of job offers and lists of requirements/skills. Derek J. de Solla Price, physicist, information scientist, historian of science, and “Herald of scientometrics” compared the height of volumes of “Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society” put in chronological order. Their height increased exponentially with time and this observation led de Solla Price to formulate his theory of exponential growth of science. This is one of these cases when size matters.
4. Creativity, wherefore art thou creativity?
Employers put themselves in a position that could be described as follows: creativity is a fashionable and omnipresent requirement but companies don’t know or don’t want to admit that creativity is a rebel. They want a Leonardo da Vinci on demand. Employers declare that they want a creative employee with a long list of skills but oftentimes they bury the very same creativity and skills under a number of responsibilities assigned.
Yet creativity is where independence is, outside the box thinking, ability and experience in reading patterns and seeing regularities – and this comes with not paying too much attention to bosses and authorities. Think Scandinavian crime stories, Sherlock Holmes, inspector George Gently and Vera. These inspectors, women and men (Sherlock Holmes is a separated case and a world on its own) are creative puzzle solvers and they don’t fit too well in a world where hierarchical order is key. Perhaps because creativity comes with horizontal ways of thinking, not vertical?
Simon Baron-Cohen, psychologist and professor of developmental psychopathology, wrote about astounding similarities between two – apparently different – pattern seekers: creative people and people with autism/ on autism spectrum who can systemize, and systemizing leads to invention. “Genius is sometimes defined as looking at the same information that others have looked at before and either noticing a pattern that others have missed or coming up with a new pattern that constitutes an invention”.1 Please keep in mind two words: creativity and autism. Both independent and impervious to authorities’ voices.
Art Markman, professor of psychology and cognitive scientist, wrote: “Productive people move through the tasks they have to accomplish in a systemic way. They make steady and measurable progress toward their goals. They make effective and efficient use of their time. Creativity… doesn’t. Creativity needs time and space to grow… It is hard to simply schedule a few hours here and there to engage in creative pursuits… I think it is correct that you need to hire 10-20% more people that you actually need to complete jobs if you are going to give everyone an opportunity to develop their creative skills… It is possible to manage in a way that promotes creativity, but it will require productivity-obsessed managers to loosen their grip on the way people spend their time at work”2
Do you remember when Google revealed that their employees can spend 20 per cent of their time doing creative things, working on new ideas? It was in 2004. 17 years later a 4 years long 4 days workweek pilot project in Iceland with 2500 employees participating was a success. No reduction in pay, better work-life balance, more time for hobbies and families.3 Recently, CBC News described companies in Quebec that decide to shorten the work week to 32-34 hours.4 And there is this recent article in Forbes on the economic growth that depends on the flow of people and ideas. 5 Aren’t employers small societies that need diversity and trying “many different things”?
So what creativity is for employers?
If we start light, it’s “actively participating” and “don’t go unnoticed”, “a passion for advancing” (whatever it is, but it sounds nice) and “excellent research, quantitative and analytical skills”, “strategic thinking and analytical skills”, “have a reputation for creativity.”
Then there is a group of job offers where creativity is unequivocally related to increasing business:
– crunching numbers and analyzing trends to increase business
– identify opportunities
– ability to identify trends and think about the market in innovative ways, can translate ideas into thoughtful deliverables
– create, scale, reinvent and drive business growth
– build a pipeline of investment ideas
Then there are companies looking for problem solvers and realizing that problem solving is connected to critical thinking:
– a natural problem solver and decision maker
– adaptability, resourcefulness, initiative, intellectual curiosity, critical thinking, problem solving
– superb critical, analytical, and strategic thinking, decision making and problem-solving skills
– critically analyzing data, ability to synthetize
– their super ability is to find the pattern of needles in a haystack … there are no problems, only solutions
– excellent ability to anticipate and resolve problems
– to develop a decision matrix
Some companies realize that creative means independent and include this in their job offers:
– ability to work independently
– proven research and report drafting skills
– must be a strong self-starter and able to work well independently
And there is a group of companies that use a different wording:
– ability to … use different lenses
– creative curiosity
– open-minded
– a quick learner
– critical reasoning
– critical thinking
– assertiveness, initiative… strategic and creative thinking
Our favorite dream work is with a school board looking for “a conceptual thinker, recognized for your intellectual curiosity, ability to ask insightful, reflective questions, explore new territories” (5 responsibilities, 21 skills, no “additional responsibilities”!). Unfortunately, this school board is one of rare exceptions.
If you remember “Apollo 13” story (or movie), there was a situation of a square peg in a round hole and it required a considerable group of creative thinkers to solve the problem of the connection of an emergency CO2 filter. They worked under time constraints and they delivered. Yet nobody was telling them what to think or in what order.
5. Her excellency the excellency
The creative people are supposed to be not only creative, they need to excel in a long list of skills. Beware: when creativity meets excellency one could get a Renaissance person who is better than the company’s CEO.
It seems that a considerable cohort of employers are looking for perfectionists with an “attention to detail”. Attention to detail is almost everywhere and here is a question: is it so important to job offers? Research shows that people loose concentration after 8 seconds, which is shorter than for a goldfish that has a 9 seconds attention span? “It is no surprise that increased media consumption and digital lifestyles reduce the ability for consumers to focus for extended periods of time”. Sorry, the study for Microsoft Corp. was done in Canada.1
Attention to detail has some variations in intensity: from simply detail oriented, through strong attention to detail and accuracy, acute attention to detail, to high level attention to detail, reliable, focused and detail oriented to exceptional level of accuracy, exceptional attention to detail and rigueur et souci du détail.
A short detour: above average… skills and outstanding… qualifications, in-depth knowledge of…
After the banality of the attention to detail come superior and excellent:
– excellent organizational skills,
– excellent time-management and organizational skills, superior… excellent… diplomatic
– excellent written and verbal communication skills
– excellent communicator
– excellent execution of deliverables
– superior analytical skills
– excellent collaborator that finds a way to build excellent relationships
– excellent problem solving skills
– excellent critical judgments
– excellentes… + diligence, diplomatie et discretion, environnement operationnel au rythme rapide
And there is an enthusiastic poetry of AI (?) for perfectionists and multitaskers:
– self motivated, having enthusiasm for raising the bar with your work
– self-motivated with high energy, can work on multiple projects simultaneously and thrive in a fast-paced, and deadline driven environment
– ability to multitask
– a knack for multi-tasking in a fast-paced, deadline-oriented environment
– highly adaptable, fast paced environment, under tight deadlines with foregoing attention to detail
– hyper-organized
– ensuring a first class customer and candidate experience
– high volume workload in a fast-paced and changing environment
Last but not least: an adventure in the realm of extreme idealism:
– incredibly strong problem solving and analytical skills
– the ideal candidate…
How do you measure “acute attention to detail”, excellent, superior, outstanding, hyper-organized, incredibly and ideal? How an employer who wants to hire people with outstanding attention to detail can be so inapt to define attention to detail?
The illness of perfectionism seems to gain terrain not only in the life of social media celebrities and perfect (despite everything) moms. Nice selfies. Been there. It seeps, every day, to HR departments and/or job offers generators that use key words without understanding the meaning of these words.
Since there is an I Ching hexagram for everything (if you believe the adepts of this ancient Chinese art of divination/understanding the world), there is a very interesting one, number 63, called “After Completion”. It’s the only hexagram where all six lines are where there are supposed to be: in perfect position. But the lines are there only as long as there is no change, and the change happens no matter what. One can believe I Ching or not, but its’ creators knew that there is no such thing as a maintained, constant perfection. Everything changes, expands and contract (this is one of the Tai Chi fundamentals).
At the top of the tower of excellency where emotional adjectives are scarce, there is a requirement of “digital evangelism” and another one of “evangelizing the value and positive outcomes of conducting user research”. Do we want to buy from companies that mix business and religion? It is, at its best, a cul-de-sac. It’s a cult, at its worst.
6. AI and inbreeding
This is just an observation: many companies seem to be rather in need of a position filler, not a creative thinker. It could be described as a process similar to inbreeding of dogs that enhances some particular traits but makes the animal’s health vulnerable. In other words, some companies are a world of micromanaging. Employees are supposed to walk a very pre-defined path.
David Bohm, one of the most significant theoretical physicists, said: “a system isn’t necessarily closed… But is has a certain stability of structure. It tends to sustain and maintain the structure, so that when something from the outside comes in it reacts in such a way as to avoid basic changes”1 Are HR departments using AI tools/key words to generate job offers that are supposed to maintain the system, because the fear of try and error experience is bigger than ability to evolve? And yet “it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place” 2.
One could make another assumption based on numbers: the complexity of systems (company/institution is a system) is such that it’s nearly impossible to find a human able to fill out all requirements. Some employers seem to be looking for perfect, creative and detail oriented employees that are supposed to work in a way that is as close to the AI as possible. Does using AI mean a growing probability of not being exposed to the unexpected by organizations that overvalue AI tools in their recruitment process? Do these organizations choose to function as isolated systems and ignore the second law of thermodynamics? Is it an early indicator of these organizations’ weakness? What does it mean for the future of the economy?
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