Employment Opportunity: become a very small cog

Agamedes sees no room for "clever" in the tightly meshed business machine.

Do you need new -- lateral -- thinking for your own problems? email nick leth at gmail dot com. Need solutions? No worries. Now.

Every so often I make the mistake of getting interested in an employment opportunity. After all, Australia once wanted to be "the clever country" -- was that really way back in 1990?! -- and I am clever. Or am I? Perhaps I just have a very high IQ.

Here's a job ad from Rio Tinto, for a Senior Business Analyst. Look at that long list of "Key Skills / Knowledge Required"!

For those who don't want to look -- and for readers after the job has disappeared -- here are some examples:

• Sound financial and business acumen.
  
• The aptitude to identify business risks and opportunities through analysis.
  
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
  

Etc, etc, etc. There are eleven dot points, plus the requirement for a degree and to be a team player. The eleventh -- the last -- dot point is:

• Manage the Hyperion Solutions relationship.
  

Well, I thought, I could satisfy most of those requirements. Except...

I phoned the contact number.

"Am I reading this correctly?" I asked, "This requirement for Hyperion...?"

"Yes, we need someone who can hit the ground running..." replied the pleasant-sounding woman in HR.

There are eleven dot points of requirements. Plus the requirements to have a degree and be a team player. Do any of them really matter? No.

The correct, sole and sufficient criteria for this position is, Must have already implemented a Hyperion Solutions system.

Come in, plug in exactly what you have done before. It may not fit but no worries, we'll force our staff to follow whatever you used in your last position. Knowledge and experience? Irrelevant. Have you done exactly this before? Come in and do exactly the same again.

Rio have built a machine. They have defined one small cog as, Hyperion Solutions enforcer.

Want to be a very small cog in a massive machine? Apply now!

Independent thinking & independent analysis of your problems by Agamedes Consulting. Support for your thought: email nick leth at gmail dot com