Let’s Fix It: Should We Hire for the Skills of Today — or Tomorrow?

In this series of posts, Influencers explain what they wish they could fix — and how. Read all the stories here and write your own (please include the hashtag #FixIt in the body of your post).

As a longtime college alumni interviewer, I've asked many typical interview questions. Now I find one turned on me. If I could change anything, big or small, what would it be and why? There are many temptations to resist here. However, I will attempt to stay focused and be professional, mostly.

If I could, I would provide a clear, exact picture of where technology will be in 10 years.

So much of what we decide today requires making assumptions about what will be possible tomorrow. To review a few knowns, the rate of change in technology doubles every year. Items we used to see as static components of our lives (such as the home phone, the television, or even, soon, the driver behind the wheel of a car) are on the verge of extinction.

Even modern technology has become the victim of modern technology. Remember the Palm Pilot, or even the BlackBerry? How are business executives to make long-term strategic decisions in an environment where the only true certainty is that technology will change our world?

This issue plays out on many fronts, including education, employment, healthcare and environmental sustainability.

With regard to education, we have seen a dialogue emerge around the value of a college degree, particularly given the costs of education and the level of debt burdening our graduates. The common view is that graduates need to be provided the skills necessary to land a job, making studies in areas like Greek Mythology a waste of time. Online educational products such as MOOCs seem to point to the future. But what if technology changes business at such a pace that vocational skills learned in school are no longer of any value at graduation? Perhaps the Greek Mythology major is better equipped simply because he or she has acquired lifelong learning skills that better enable him or her to adapt.

As a business executive, should I be hiring those who can do the job of today or those who are best equipped to succeed tomorrow?

These questions are not new, but my gut reaction has developed a new twist. The other night at a dinner party I had a peer wag his finger in my face. We will always need people to "do the doing," he said. Yet it is easy to forsee the outcome of the growing chasm between the linear increase in costs of labor (minimum wage, healthcare) and the exponentially decreasing costs of technologies replacing labor.

The picture becomes even more clear when we acknowledge that Americans are not only getting more comfortable with using automated services, but have developed a preference for them. Yet if technology replaces some forms of employment, can we assume it will create other forms of employment? If so, what skills and knowledge will be needed to do those jobs? If not, does corporate America have a responsibility to preserve jobs at the expense of profits? And how does this all impact the future consumer?

If I could change anything, I'd make the future of technological advances crystal clear. I'd let every taxi cab driver know with greater certainty when his or her cab was about to be replaced by Uber with driverless Google cars. I'd make it clear that discussions about oil lines and fracking may soon be wasted air because within a decade we will be gaining all our power through newly engineered photovoltaic panels. I'd tell drivers that they needn’t bother donating their organs because before long hospitals will be printing organs on 3-D printers.

With crystal-clear certainty around how technology will change the world, we could shift our focus from the recent past to the future bearing down on us, greatly enhancing the likelihood that we are making the right strategic decisions today.

Photo: i?aki de luis / Flickr and Tom Blackwell / Flickr Remix: LinkedIn