'The expectations are sometimes unrealistic in terms of the breadth and depth of skills that they're looking for': experts weigh in on expecting too much of tech talent
As Canadian HR Reporter wrote earlier this month, hiring tech talent is one of the top people risks named by HR professionals in this country, with the push for top AI employees continuing and seemingly not enough talent to fill the roles.
To find out how to attract and retain the right tech talent, Canadian HR Reporter spoke with two experts who work at the confluence of tech development and human resources management: Dr. Kevin Lee, assistant professor of management and organizational behaviour at UBC’s Sauder School of Business, and Melissa Judd, vice president of research operations and academic partnerships at the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Toronto.
“With artificial intelligence, we're all on a change management journey, right? You can have fantastic technical skills and drop them into an organization – at the same time, you need to realign the organization to embrace the change that is before them,” Judd says.
“I don't think that can be necessarily solely at the foot of a data scientist. That's a whole organization approach to change and to increasing productivity or innovation, or whatever that outcome is that you're driving for.”
Unrealistic expectations for tech talent
HR professionals may receive a budget or headcount to put towards their “AI journey”, Judd says, but can lack the specific knowledge of what the most effective use of that spend on talent would be.
“Where to begin, from a hiring perspective, can be challenging,” Judd says. “You have organizations who have the right ingredients to adopt AI, they have the data that is really important, they have a business case that suggests that there's a lot of value in implementing these tools.”
But there are some mistakes that employers are making that are setting up their new tech hires for failure – such as making job descriptions too broad or expecting them to drive the change on their own or with a small or inexperienced team.
“The expectations are sometimes unrealistic, in terms of the breadth and depth of skills that they're looking for, and really how those skills are going to be applied within an organization,” says Judd.
“I think companies can be very clear about the skills and competencies that are need-to-have, non-negotiables, and what skills and competencies can be built on the job realistically, that can be coached for?”
Similarly, Lee recommends aiming for a synergistic approach that sees employers and tech employees equally merging contributions towards organizational change – a process that would necessarily involve more focused and one-on-one conversations about the applicant’s personal skills profile.
“What are those synergy points?” Lee says. “What can those skills specifically do in the context of the various different challenges that our organization is facing?”
Hiring tech talent for ‘symbolic occupations’?
Lee has identified a phenomenon he calls “symbolic occupations”, which are jobs that have arisen from the hype around AI and data – citing roles such as “chief algorithmic officer” or “data scientist” as examples: “Occupations that really didn't exist before, and they don't always have very clear job descriptions … and when they actually get into the organization, they don't really know what they're supposed to do.”
These symbolic occupations can be a result of on organization wanting to appear cutting-edge for shareholders or customers, Lee says, but the employees who fill these roles bear the brunt of the pressure, with outsized expectations and maybe not the experience to know how to handle it.
“I think understanding what different people in the organization can bring to a conversation with a prospective applicant is really important,” Judd adds.
“Obviously a technical team is going to have a very different conversation with a prospective employee than HR might have. So understanding what one is assessing for in those conversations, looking at the person holistically – what is driving, what is motivating them in terms of joining your organization?”
Taking the time to hire “holistically”, Judd says, enables new hires the opportunity to be trained on the job for areas they are not strong in, such as communication, thereby gaining the ability to advocate for what they need to succeed.
Ethical implications of hiring tech talent
There can also be ethical implications for hiring tech talent, Lee says, as sometimes these roles can be given more decision-making power than they might be qualified for.
“Just because you know about the technical dimensions of these things, doesn't always mean that you know everything about its social side, or its organizational side or consequences for society,” Lee says.
“Neither should you necessarily be the person that should make recommendations on those fronts … they may know a lot about this technical product, but as to how it's going to be useful, or what kind of analysis they should run, or what ways they can actually contribute to the organization, these are things I think that managers themselves need to actually think through a little bit before they get in the business of bringing somebody on.”
