The knowledge economy conjures a world of smart people, in smart jobs, doing smart things, in smart ways, for smart money, a world increasingly open to all rather than a few. Glossy corporate brochures present a future in challenging, exciting and financially rewarding jobs for the winners in the competition for fast track management appointments. They also convey an image of enlightened employers actively seeking to diversify their talent pool, reflected in their approach to identifying, hiring and retaining outstanding talent.
We are told that the challenge confronting governments around the world is to enhance the employability of the workforce. Every effort must be made to expand access to higher education, dismantle barriers to talent regardless of social circumstances, gender, or skin colour, and to harness human creativity and enterprise to meet the demands of the new economy.
The Mismanagement of Talent comes to a different conclusion. Those leaving the world of mass higher education find themselves in a scramble for jobs with rising stakes for the winners and losers. The Mismanagement of Talent examines what determines the outcome of this race when a degree loses its badge of distinction. It shows how some graduates are playing 'the game' to win a competitive advantage and what really happens in the selection events of leading-edge employers. It also argues that talent is being mismanaged by employers that have yet to come to terms with the realities and possibilities of mass higher education.
The Mismanagement of Talent will be thought-provoking and controversial reading for those involved in the recruitment of graduates, and those concerned with the way knowledge-based firms recruit and the impact of higher education policy:
Professionals working in university careers services, HRM, training, or recruitment generally; Researchers, academics, or students of Business and Management, Human Resource Management, Public Policy, Education, or Sociology; and Job candidates themselves - the 'players' and 'purists' described in the book.
This book lifts the veneer of 'employability', to expose serious problems in the way that future workers are trying to manage their employability in the competition for tough-entry jobs in the knowledge economy; in how companies understand their human resource strategies and endeavor to
recruit the managers and leaders of the future; and in the government failure to come to terms with the realities of the knowledge-based economy. The demand for high-skilled, high waged jobs, has been exaggerated. But it is something that governments want to believe because it distracts attention
from thorny political issues around equality, opportunity, and redistribution. If it is assumed that there are plenty of good jobs for people with the appropriate credentials then the issue of who gets the best jobs loses its political sting. But if good jobs are in limited supply, how the
competition for a livelihood is organized assumes paramount importance. This issue, is not lost on the middle classes, given that they depend on academic achievement to maintain, if not advance the occupational and social status of family members. The reality is that increasing congestion in the
market for knowledge workers has led to growing middle class anxieties about how their off-spring are going to meet the rising threshold of employability that now has to be achieved to stand any realistic chance of finding interesting and rewarding employment. The result is a bare-knuckle struggle
for access to elite schools, colleges, universities and jobs. This book examines whether employability policies are flawed because they ignore the realities of 'positional' conflict in the competition for a livelihood, especially as the rise of mass higher education has arguably done little to
increase the employability of students for tough-entry jobs. It will be of interest to anyone looking to understand the way knowledge-based firms recruit and how this is influenced by government policy,
... not an easy read but a very worthwhile one ... if you want to seriously think through the long-term implications of our current recruitment approaches, and how we might create better, fairer, more productive and fulfilling organisations and societies in the West for our offspring to work and live in, then give this a read.
