By Aarushi Puri
In the course of my elusive search for a job, running from pillar to post, I’ve had the opportunity of scouring through numerous job descriptions and interacting with recruiters across all spectrums. There are those who nod approvingly upon seeing my resume, while others treat it with disdain. While I may not necessarily meet the requirements of organisations which espouse their love for candidates who fit the “good team player, imaginative, curious, willing to learn, all-we-require-is-the-right-attitude “ mould, I seem to have discovered an ideal candidate. Granted he cannot take up a technical role which requires a skillset only acquired in the laboratories of a university; but there are plenty of organisations which value generalist qualities .This candidate also happens to be my cousin. And we just celebrated his sixth birthday.
His friends are no less qualified. They grab any opportunity they can get to learn more about the world around them from adults. I was asked to explain why the neighbours’ calico cat had a multi coloured coat. Sensing it would not be wise to delve into chromosomal theory, I feigned ignorance. They persisted. Children do not give up easily; with every “why” they show their ignorance and wear it as a badge of honour.
They are also highly imaginative and quick learners. Seeing them work with LEGO® blocks, I noted that they grasped the concepts of a strong foundation rather quickly. Perhaps they were left with no choice– after spending a good half hour building a lofty tower only to watch it collapse, a strong foundation seemed to be the only logical conclusion. But they could also have given up and banished the LEGO® to the dark recesses of the cupboard, and that did not happen. “Lofty imagination grounded in the firm foundation of pragmatism”, was a friend’s self-introduction at an interview with a company that eventually hired him. His response doesn’t seem much different from the Lego-building philosophy of my six-year-old cousin.
Admitting what one doesn’t know and learning through an iterative process of trial and error may well define the tried and tested toddler learning methodology. It is also a rather active methodology; one which requires the child to be proactive and seek knowledge. Strange then, that from this promising group of inquisitive knowledge-seeking kindergarteners, only a privileged few will be judged by their peers and society as having succeeded a few decades down the line.
Ken Robinson, the noted British educationalist, lamented on how we were being educated out of creativity – a trait which he regards to be ‘as important as literacy’. While education seems intended to train individuals for the industrial economy, it seems woefully unprepared to handle the latest demands of the service based sector: a sector which appears to be stressing intangible skills that are seemingly attributed as a product of character. The fact that many organisations welcome people from all majors to join their workforce, that they come up with exhaustive rotational training programmes to equip new hires with the skills of the trade, and that some stress on hiring “the person, not the position,” seems to suggest that universities may need to evolve from playing a skill-imparting role to a character honing one. And yet of the traits so desired, many are innate. Curiosity defines early childhood and we are born explorers. It’s not something that requires training; but it certainly requires nourishing.
I have no doubt that my cousin and his friends, if interviewed today, would meet most of the generalist requirements in a job description. Their struggles with learning how to walk, grappling with abstract and arcane symbols in mathematics, and pursuing with relentless effort the memorisation of a string of characters which start with an apple and end with a zebra would stand testament to their effort to thrive in unfamiliar environments. The last disagreement they had over a game of football and the strange ritual which they engaged in to resolve it may satisfy concerned recruiters on a candidate’s ability to cope with disagreements in the workplace. Whether these personality traits and skills would remain after a couple of decades of brain washing; I have my doubts.