Employee-centric hiring notices

Many months ago, I was asked to draft a hiring notice for a position in my group. Now, I've been working in teams whose raison d'etre is 'innovation', so it is reasonable to assume that we not only do innovative things, but also are seen to be innovative (i.e. creative/different/novel/better/more effective) in everything we do.

I don't like most job postings, especially in the tech world - they are never candidate-centric. The average job ad will give you a dry list of expected skills and tell you something about the group looking to hire. They don't give you even a fraction of a hint as to what it would be like to work there, and why you would consider it worth your while in a life-changing way to work there.

They don't market the job in an engaging manner and they don't treat you as a human, or at least a human that thinks beyond keywords.

So I drafted what I thought was an engaging note, trying to succinctly describe what it would be like to come work for us, what someone could reasonably hope to achieve, and why someone should consider all this in the first place. Especially, since we were a off-beat team (or so I thought) that was both 'cool' (in theory) and 'challenging' (not being run-of-the-mill).

The ending of this story isn't hard to foresee: the notice went up to my supervisors who, in their wisdom, edited most of it out and in the end, we were left with a desiccated list of keywords. And yes, we did hire someone eventually (it's always hard to say if he was the best man for the post - time will tell), so it wasn't as if that was ineffective. But I thought we lost an opportunity to signal so many intangible attributes about who we are and what we do. Perhaps the people in charge of the notice didn't share those feelings with me.

A job notice is perhaps the first engagement that a candidate has with a hiring manager or a group or a company. First impressions are a great way to strike a chord. Don't lose that opportunity.

"The Myths of Innovation" by Scott Berkun (O'Reilly Media)

Scott Berkun is an author and blogger, a former Microsoft man. I began reading his blog a couple of years ago, and have found most of his posts interesting and even provocative. In fact, he makes a point of being strident in his views about management, public speaking, and thinking.

"Myths of Innovation" is his second book (the first was about project management, and the third is about public speaking). Ordinarily, I'm wary of anything with the I-word in the title because most people use "innovation" to indicate a vague sense of novelty and as synonyms for invention or creativity. They've either never thought what they mean by it or use it just like they use most other verbose polysyllabic words. However, Berkun has often suggested that perhaps it would be good (for our collective mental health no doubt) if people could stop using the word "innovation", I was reasonably sure of being spared the fertiliser.

I'm not saying that the expressed need for (more) innovation is hollow or just a fad. Most industries and societies at some point in their lifecycles need to change (indeed, are compelled to), in order to survive, flourish, grow, or just to avoid dying of boredom. Doing new and useful things is immensely challenging and interesting, and some people are going to be very inclined to try their hand at it. If they are also of the reading type, then "The Myths of Innovation" will be a useful book for them.

These myths are obviously not in the mould of hand-me-down stories. They are better understood as being assumptions, unspoken ideas that take insidious home in minds. Take, for instance, the idea that some of history's greatest inventors were hermits, working in wooden cottages bouncing ideas off the house cat. Okay, not so much that, but the notion of the solitary innovator, having to single-handedly fight off the status quo, has always been great material for long-lived stories and trivia questions. Any reading of history easily debunks many of these stories. Edison, the archetypal inventor, had an army of researchers and technologists. Steve Jobs, innovator extraordinaire, needed to find his Woz, his Ive, and many more. Yes, they had to fight the proverbial systems, but they had cohorts. The revision history of any innovation, to use a software engineering term, will show the grubby fingerprints of many, with several increments and roll-backs. One thing will be certain: the more the longevity of the innovation, the more it would have evolved and the more the people involved.

Berkun tackles this and other such myths, including some counter-intuitive ones such as "Innovation is always good". Anyone forced to listen to an annoying ring-tone in a public space would know that isn't quite true. The book is engaging (and well-referenced) with a variety of anecdotes and discussions, and there are no homilies.

Towards the end, moving away from the negative tone, the book turns into a checklist of various suggestions, "hacks" of interest to the creative innovator. Perhaps Berkun didn't want to limit the book to a list of things you shouldn't assume or avoid doing. It's by no means comprehensive, but useful nevertheless. He also encloses an excellent bibliography. Sure, you can spend time reading them all, but to me, the message of the book is that if you think you want to innovate, what you should do is: just go ahead.

I reviewed this book as part of O'Reilly's Blogger Review Program. This is the first time I've done so, and it was mostly motivated by being able to read this particular book for free. Sorry Scott :-)

Re-creative thinking

A couple of weeks ago, Scott Berkun tweeted something that I found quite interesting:

Many adults haven't *made* anything in yrs - giving them legos/crayons would help more than reading books on creativity

I wonder if this state of affairs is by unconscious design - reading creativity books seems like a proxy for action to its readers. It is immensely easier than picking up lego blocks or crayons. Children are not (yet) intimidated by a blank canvas or a vacuum, and not so scared about being told off for colouring outside the lines. So to those who want to be more creative, especially to those who know that there are answers in books, the first instinct may be to read about how to be creative, than to practise being creative. It makes you feel you are planning your steps towards that cherished goal without having to dip your toes in the cold water.

And sometimes (who knows) it might not turn out to be that cold!

Foot-tapping

Mavalli Tiffin Rooms is quite a Bangalore institution, with its silver coffee tumblers and khaaraa bhaats. 11 took me there one Saturday morning after a walk through Lalbagh. The most interesting thing about the experience came at the very end, when I went to wash my hands.

I don't know who came up with it, but the idea is brilliant: the washbasin has a foot-operated tap. This allows you to rinse your hands without touching the tap with your sambaar-chutnified fingers. Moreover, you don't need to remember to close the tap when done, a common problem in public washbasins. Regulation of flow is fairly intuitive and corresponds directly to foot pressure rather than turning a tap in circles.

Why don't we have more foot-controlled taps? Why is MTR the only place where I've seen this? And why, despite having a phone with a camera, did I not take a photo for this blog?

Update (16 Feb 2010): Saurabh clicked a photo of the tap which can be seen here (you may have to use your imagination a little :-) )

From New York to New Guinea

Seems to me that, there are two ends to the spectrum of generating new ideas. In one, there's the cliched lone scientist messing about in a dingy underground lab under a bulb, trying to uncover the light. In the other, the innovator is in the middle of a teeming bazaar of smells and currents, a place full of distractions and opinions, where sometimes, there's just too much light.

It's like species evolving in New Guinea and New York. The former allows the relative isolation that allows nature to fork off into completely new directions in the presence of unconventional constraints . In the latter, species are constantly intermingling with each other, smashing into each other and producing new forms in response to more common constraints.

So the New Guinea innovation has more time to blossom, fewer people to nip it in the bud by being critical. But it could be less likely to survive when the more inhabited parts of Earth come visiting. New York innovations get brutally crushed down, but this happens early. The good ones sometimes cross-breed with other ideas from other people, and the ones that survive are hardy organisms, because they just have had to escape being crushed under so many feet.

However, New Guinean ideas are likely to be truly radical, while New Yorker ideas might just make a quick buck on the sidewalk to take advantage of the next flavour of the week. Ideas from New Guinea tend to remain unnoticed unless they are discovered by dashing explorers, while New Yorker ideas can be on TV and in your email.

Books on innovation suggest ideas from the melting pot of New York are more likely to succeed (or perhaps, more likely to fail early). That shouldn't mean there is no place for the life-forms of the remote island of New Guinea, but not everyone should be doing that, for the post-Victorian world has a lot less patience.

However, do most people expect innovations to come out of New Guinea, because it's so exotic? Most scientists would find it easier to live in New Guinea (as long as the pay cheque and the internet bandwidth is assured!), but fewer light bulbs have come out of New Guinea than New York. But if you are looking for a bird of paradise, head down to Oceania.

In the end, it could be comparing apples to oranges: scientists need New Guinea while innovators need New York. The first step to the right island would be to know who we really are.