The Mismanagement of Talent: Employability and Jobs in the Knowledge EconomyThis book lifts the veneer of 'employability', to expose serious problems in the way that future workers are trying to manage their employability in the competition for tough-entry jobs in the knowledge economy; in how companies understand their human resource strategies and endeavor to recruit the managers and leaders of the future; and in the government failure to come to terms with the realities of the knowledge-based economy. The demand for high-skilled, high waged jobs, has been exaggerated. But it is something that governments want to believe because it distracts attention from thorny political issues around equality, opportunity, and redistribution. If it is assumed that there are plenty of good jobs for people with the appropriate credentials then the issue of who gets the best jobs loses its political sting. But if good jobs are in limited supply, how the competition for a livelihood is organized assumes paramount importance. This issue, is not lost on the middle classes, given that they depend on academic achievement to maintain, if not advance the occupational and social status of family members. The reality is that increasing congestion in the market for knowledge workers has led to growing middle class anxieties about how their off-spring are going to meet the rising threshold of employability that now has to be achieved to stand any realistic chance of finding interesting and rewarding employment. The result is a bare-knuckle struggle for access to elite schools, colleges, universities and jobs. This book examines whether employability policies are flawed because they ignore the realities of 'positional' conflict in the competition for a livelihood, especially as the rise of mass higher education has arguably done little to increase the employability of students for tough-entry jobs. It will be of interest to anyone looking to understand the way knowledge-based firms recruit and how this is influenced by government policy, be they Researchers, Academics and Students of Business and Management, Industrial Relations, Human Resource Management, Politics or Sociology; Human Resource Management or Recruitment Professionals; or job candidates. |
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The Mismanagement of Talent:Employability and Jobs in the Knowledge Economy ... Phillip Brown,Anthony Hesketh No preview available - 2004 |
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ability achievement applicants assessment centres assessors assumptions background behaviour candidate’s candidates career cent challenge chapter cognitive elite companies competence context corporate credentials cultural degree demand develop diversity elite employability employers employment equal ethnic evidence example experience fast track focus future gender global graduate recruitment Harvard Business School high skilled higher education highlights human Ibid important increasing inequalities interview issues job market knowledge economy knowledge workers labour market leadership leading edge companies London looking managerial and professional mass higher education ment meritocratic nomic occupational offer one’s opportunities organizational organizations Oxbridge Oxford performance personal capital Players positional potential proactivity problem Public Sector Purists recruitment process reflects rhetoric role seen selection senior social soft currencies success suggests talent technical there’s things tion tough-entry jobs United Kingdom workforce