Auditorio Nacional needs better HR

Last weekend my friend and I went to Auditorio Nacional in Madrid to see the Best of Broadway with the National Choir and Orchestra of Spain. That was my first time at the Auditorio and obviously I was very excited. The building smelled of the 80s and the decor was following suit, but that´s a side thought.

The program included some of my favorite pieces, such as Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, Night and Day, I Could Have Danced All Night, Stars, etc. Naturally, my spirits and expectations were high and, unfortunately, not supported by harder spirits, pardon the pun. The soloists were great, no doubt about that. Jennifer Larmore, for instance, is a world'renowned mezzo-soprano, singing the closing song at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. However, when she was doing I Feel Pretty, I was not feeling pretty at all. I mean, I enjoyed her voice and the performance, but something was missing. I realized later what exactly. Maria is a young girl, innocent of life and plentiful of hopes. When you give that part to an opera diva, the result is not pretty.

It happens a lot: the square peg and the round hole problem. More often than you think. Great people get hired for jobs, which are not suitable for them. The philosophy is like with arranged marriages: it's gonna work. Well, it does not. It's better to have an average candidate for a suitable job that a top performer for the same job, but in which he does not fit. Normally, those employees leave maximum after a year.

Here's the rub: when you see talent, you should grab it, but what should you do if there is no suitable role for that person? We are running into the mandate to hire problem, when a recruiter is given the authority to hire a high-potential candidate on the spot or within a very short period of time like three days, but how do we approach the headache of the business HR, who now needs to stick that brilliant candidate somewhere? The jury is still out on this one...

Finding strengths

Have you heard of StrengthsFinder 2.0? I am sure this title has sent a number of my group mates into shudders. Some don't like, others are fascinated by the outcomes, but one thing that nobody can negate is that it is one of those rare personality assessments that focus on the strengths rather than on weaknesses.

From early childhood on, we are being reproached for what we are bad at, but rarely are we praised on our strong points. Why? Because the society likes to hold firm stereotypes of what we should be and once we wander away from the "ideal" picture, there is always a hammer to bang us back down. When you are a genius in Literature and failing in Maths, you will be sent to Maths courses and will have to spend innumerable hours with private teachers and Maths problems, rather than reading more books and honing what you have a natural talent for. It's time to shift the perspective.

StrengthsFinder helps you identify 5 areas (talents) that are your natural strengths. It was fascinating for me to go through the discovery process. At first, I read the book and tried to guess what my 5 talents were. Then I asked a friend who knows me well to guess what those were for me. After that we compared the two lists. Finally, I took the test. The interesting part is that none of us were able to guess more than 3, and two strengths came out of nowhere, but now that I am looking at the definitions, I can surely see myself in those.

The big question is, as always, what am I going to do with the results? Well, the first thing that I did was incorporating some of the strengths and the wording from the book into my resume and it does look nicer. Secondly, I used this concept at the interview when I was going through the assessment center at DHL. I was asked why I believed I would make a good consultant and I compared the qualities I thought a good consultant would possess to the 5 talents identified through SrengthsFinder. I am not claiming it helped greatly, but I got the offer. Thirdly, this assessment provides some suggestions on how you can build up even further in your self-development. After all, we all grow from the positive and strong, not the negative and weak.

If you have not read the book yet, I would definitely recommend, but take it with a pinch of salt. As everything in this world, nothing is definitive, not even death and taxes.

Tough career choices

Talent vs Skill. One you are born with, the other one takes time and lots of sweat. Still, no matter how hard you try, the most well-skilled person will lose to someone who is naturally talented. So why trying?

In Buckingham M & Clifton D (2001). Now, Discover Your Strengths the same questions are echoed when it comes to making decisions about your career:

• What are your talents?
• What roles and careers would make maximal use of your talents?

Deciding on particular skills to develop, I can start the list with

• Public speaking.
• Interpersonal influence.
• Analytical reasoning.
• Ability to emphasize.
• Doing research.
• Acquiring knowledge.
• Thinking creativity.
• ...and it will take us a couple of days to complete it.

Marrying supply with demand, what are the skills required in the market nowadays? I am going to give you the most common MBA answer - it depends. If we talk about CEOs and their jobs, it's one set of skills (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m4070/is_n84/ai_14362697/). When we look at, for instance, South Africa, its government is interested in a somewhat different agenda, provided shortage of skilled workers overall: http://www.labour.gov.za/legislation/acts/skills-development/skills-development-act-and-amendments.

The decision is yours and it is difficult to give recommendations. There may be areas you are passionate about but not being naturally talented in them, you will be always playing second roles, while your natural talents may not excite you as much and you may decide not to leverage those in a work environment. Good coaching combined with personality assessments will help, and a bit of judgement will be useful too. Plus I always trust my gut feel and as the saying goes, "He who does not risk, does not drink champagne."