Yesterday I read an interesting article on LinkedIn by Lou Adler suggesting that traditional job descriptions are anti-talent. It resonated.
Today I saw a job posting on LinkedIn for an unspecified anonymous company that consults to large companies, helping them innovate and come up with new products. The job lists among its requirements successfully creating major growth, developing new products and services, taking an existing business into new areas, introducing new revenue streams to a business, building innovation from the bottom up, ability to work in a non-hierarchical, get your hands dirty style, and other such experience. In other words, they are looking for an entrepreneur, who has originated ideas, executed on them leading a team and built significant value where there was none before. This person will then teach other people how to do it. Makes sense.
Now here comes the weird part. In the section for candidates' backgrounds, they list the following types of work experience:
- Working in marketing at a large corporation
- Working in the venture division of a large corporation
- Working at a strategy consultancy for large corporate clients
- Working in the venture division of a traditional strategy consultancy
- Working at an innovation consultancy.
What's wrong with this picture? Where is entrepreneurship, the home run hitter of innovation, on this list? These roles aren't inventor-executor-leaders roles; they are analyst-and-explainers roles. The work experience they list doesn't lead to the work requirements they demand.
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