Stop All This Communication Stuff Already!

bob weinstein - July 31, 2003

Raise your hand if you can tell me how many times you've been told communication skills are really, really essential in job hunting. Hundreds! "Wow." Thousands! "Incredible." If you can't communicate, you're kaputski and you don't get the job. Humiliated, you're kicked out on the street without even a cup of coffee.

 

Career counselors drive home the importance of communication and so do executive coaches, the outplacement crowd (both of whom often don't have a clue how the real world works) and psychologists masquerading as management consultants. Even your mom and dad insist you stop being a barbarian and speak right.

 

Excelling at communication is drummed into you as soon as you start job hunting, maybe earlier. And it's driven home by more statistics than you dare to remember. According to a recent survey by The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), the qualities employers want most from college students for employment are communication skills, honesty and integrity, and teamwork skills, in that order.

 

Virtually everyone in the hiring process whistles the "I want communicators" skiffle. But what if a job candidate is a terrible communicator--verbally inarticulate and writing skills not worthy of the company newsletter? [editor's note: Hey! I write the company newsletter!]

 

Does he deserve a chance to prove himself? Should he pray to the communication goddess for 48 hours hoping to become an engaging chatterer, hire a blundering $100-an-hour career coach who's never had a real job or buy an over-priced "how-to" career book that does little but fling tired cliches? Dilemma, dilemma.

 

Solution? Ever consider that he shouldn't have to do anything, and that excellent communication skills are not always paramount?

 

Companies are so obsessed with the hunt for good communicators they often fail to hire talent. And candidates lose out because they can't blurt a coherent sentence. The solution is twofold: companies should reconsider their hiring requirements and candidates should concentrate on sharpening their skills that land them jobs.

 

PMs would do well to consider the importance of communication skills when evaluating job candidates' credentials. That's not to say communication skills have little value; they're   important when you are aspiring to ascend the corporate ladder. If you can't chat it up with the folks upstairs, you're doomed to stay in a holding pattern.

 

But if you've made the commitment to move up, you'll be sauntering into meetings and delivering powerhouse presentations (it doesn't matter whether you have anything to say), spending a couple of weeks a year in corporate retreats pledging eternal allegiance to your company,   attending training sessions and playing golf. You better get yourself some decent golf clubs, and a couple pairs of those silly plaid pants before you board the corporate jet.

 

For team members with no aspirations of being CIO and who are content to stay where they are, finely turned communication skills shouldn't be the high priority. So why do we subject them to the communication hot-seat, expecting textbook answers when applying for jobs?

 

Christopher Locke's eyes cross at the mention of communication skills. Locke is a social critic, commentator, philosopher, glib wise guy, card-carrying cynic, iconoclast and author of The Bombast Transcripts, Rants and Screeds of Rageboy.

 

"The term 'communication' is so vanilla, it says nothing," Locke snarls. "Our insistence on excellent communication can be likened to turning in resumes that look alike that include an objective on top, a bunch of jobs and a windup section about education and a couple of meaningless membership associations. Change the jobs and the same resume can apply to thousands of job candidates. The most valuable part of a resume, which is what is special about the candidate, is left out. That's communication lockdown."

 

Locke concludes that "excellent communication skills" is an empty phase. We don't know what it is because the same standards are applied to everyone.

 

We assume everyone speaks the same language. A master machinist, car assembler, nuclear physicist, pharmaceutical technician or veteran project manager don't communicate the same way. And you'll fling yourself off a cliff trying to extract a simple sentence out of a geek. They might as well be from Mars.

 

Starched HR policy-makers can't craft communication policy for everyone. In Frames of Mind, The Theory of Multiple Intelligence, Howard Gardner says there are many kinds of intelligence, which means there are many ways to communicate. If companies except that biological fact of life, they are more likely to get high-powered candidates instead of communication clones.

 

Everyone isn't an extrovert, nor wants to be, adds Locke. Why shouldn't non-communicative coders be allowed, even encouraged, to barricade themselves in their cubicle to work undisturbed?

 

Atari Corporation CEO Nolan Bushnell said that some of the most talented engineers "come in bodies that can't talk." And "some of the most creative people prefer to spend time alone with their thoughts and ideas."

 

The moral of the story? Encourage job candidates to sell their strengths and differences. Companies are all about making money, as well as they should be. They can only do that with talent rather than glib talkers who can ramble on about politics and football scores. Save that for after-work beers.

Bob Weinstein is a syndicated columnist for King Features. He writes a weekly technology career column that appears in daily newspapers throughout the United States. He has written 12 books.

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