Monday December 12th 2005, 5:43 pm . Filed under: Uncategorized

Recruitment Ad reads:

“Fluency of Ideas — The ability to come up with a number of ideas about a topic (the number of ideas is important, not their quality, correctness, or creativity).”

Ron chanced upon this on bayt.com – found it totally outrageous that there are companies out there who would so blatantly consider saying that they are ‘looking for quantity and not quality of ideas’ when hiring a new recruit !!!!???!!!!

But wait a minute…. the job thats been advertised for, IS in KSA afterall .. no surprise – i suppose!

click here to see for yourself (scroll down and click on Creative Director Job)

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3 Comments

http://sonofhut.com James

The reason they want quantity over quality is that most managers (or clients for that matter) don’t know what quality is (or are too scared to choose lest they be held accountable). And so they throw all the quantity up in the air and let the market/client decide what’s quality.

Take as prime example of this practice: major US TV network and film studios. Make 18(?) films a year and pray that one goes well– usually they all suck.

SO I guess what I’m saying is though it’s horrible to have it highlighted in recruitment ads it’s probably commercially savvy of the company given the current media landscape. And it’s certainly honest about the way they’ll shameless milk young ‘uns for their ideas (all of them).

(Secondary point: phase 1 of brainstorming does require the generation of a volume of ideas without criticism or review– so maybe they want brainstormers or perhaps just brains. BrrAAAAAAins!!!)
http://www.blogger.com/profile/1743733 Amrit(raj)

James… thanks for the comment on that post.. :)

I see what you mean by ‘let the market/client decide what’s quality’ and whilst that totally degrades our position as the crackerjacks of the profession, it definitely streamlines the entire procedure of quality control.

But dude!! i still think that there is something so morally wrong by saying that the correctness or creativity of ideas are not important in a recruitment ad.

Perhaps this example is a litttle dramatic, but isn’t it like saying its important for a surgeon to know how to slice ‘n dice and saving lives is not a priority.

wtf ?
james

Back in the bad old days when I worked in TV, management routinely down played the role of “ideas” saying they were a time a dozen. To be fair they were in part arguing that execution is so much more important that the lone idea but it does seem ironic that some of their few recent successes are thank to solo producers working their arse off to get very original ideas to fly while the management’s own run-of-the-mill/ same old, same old withered on the vine.

To conclude it’s probably something to do with the managers needing to rationalise their own high wages and the fact they treat creative people like peons. And yet these same managers still reserve the right to act as arbiters of taste despite their lack of style, taste or insight. [insert more ranting here]