[Prev][Next][Index][Thread]
pachydermic personnel prediction
PACHYDERMIC PERSONNEL PREDICTION
by Peter C. Olsen
A bold new proposal for matching
high-technology people and professions
Over the years, the problem of finding the right person for the right job has
consumed thousands of worker-years of research and millions of dollars in
funding. This is particularly true for high-technology organizations where
talent is scarce and expensive. Recently, however, years of detailed study by
the finest minds in the field of psycho- industrial interpersonnel optimization
have resulted in the development of a simple and foolproof test to determine
the best match between personality and profession. Now, at last, people can be
infallibly assigned to the jobs for which they are truly best suited.
The procedure is simple: Each subject is sent to Africa to hunt elephants. The
subsequent elephant-hunting behavior is then categorized by comparison to the
classification rules outlined below. The subject should be assigned to the
general job classification that best matches the observed behavior.
CLASSIFICATION GUIDELINES
Mathematicians hunt elephants by going to Africa, throwing out everything that
is not an elephant, and catching one of whatever is left. Experienced
mathematicians will attempt to prove the existence of at least one unique
elephant before proceeding to step 1 as a subordinate exercise. Professors of
mathematics will prove the existence of at least one unique elephant and then
leave the detection and capture of an actual elephant as an exercise for their
graduate students.
Computer scientists hunt elephants by exercising Algorithm A:
1. Go to Africa.
2. Start at the Cape of Good Hope.
3. Work northward in an orderly manner, traversing the continent
alternately east and west.
4. During each traverse pass,
a. Catch each animal seen.
b. Compare each animal caught to a known elephant.
c. Stop when a match is detected.
Experienced computer programmers modify Algorithm A by placing a known elephant
in Cairo to ensure that the algorithm will terminate. Assembly language
programmers prefer to execute Algorithm A on their hands and knees.
Engineers hunt elephants by going to Africa, catching gray animals at random,
and stopping when any one of them weighs within plus or minus 15 percent of any
previously observed elephant.
Economists don't hunt elephants, but they believe that if elephants are paid
enough, they will hunt themselves.
Statisticians hunt the first animal they see N times and call it
an elephant.
Consultants don't hunt elephants, and many have never hunted anything at all,
but they can be hired by the hour to advise those people who do. Operations
research consultants can also measure the correlation of hat size and bullet
color to the efficiency of elephant-hunting strategies, if someone else will
only identify the elephants.
Politicians don't hunt elephants, but they will share the elephants you catch
with the people who voted for them.
Lawyers don't hunt elephants, but they do follow the herds around arguing about
who owns the droppings. Software lawyers will claim that they own an entire
herd based on the look and feel of one dropping.
Vice presidents of engineering, research, and development try hard to hunt
elephants, but their staffs are designed to prevent it. When the vice
president does get to hunt elephants, the staff will try to ensure that all
possible elephants are completely prehunted before the vice president sees
them. If the vice president does see a nonprehunted elephant, the staff will
(1) compliment the vice president's keen eyesight and (2) enlarge itself to
prevent any recurrence.
Senior managers set broad elephant-hunting policy based on the assumption that
elephants are just like field mice, but with deeper voices.
Quality assurance inspectors ignore the elephants and look for mistakes the
other hunters made when they were packing the jeep.
Sales People don't hunt elephants but spend their time selling elephants they
haven't caught, for delivery two days before the season opens.
Software sales people ship the first thing they catch and write up an invoice
for an elephant.
Hardware sales people catch rabbits, paint them gray, and sell them as
desktop elephants.
VALIDATION
A validation survey was conducted about these rules. Almost all the people
surveyed about these rules were valid. A few were invalid, but they expected
to recover soon. Based on the survey, a statistical confidence level was
determined. Ninety-five percent of the people surveyed have at least 67
percent confidence in statistics.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This study has benefited from the suggestions and observations of many people,
all of whom would prefer not to be mentioned by name.