THE WRITTEN WORD

In 1995 the world had its first taste of internet shopping and swapping when

‘Craig’s List’, named after its eponymous founder, Craig Newmark. and eBay popped

up on computers screens and ever since then the net has become the place to go to

if you want to find a new car, new partner, new teapot or new job.

Everything is online these days and cursive writing is now a thing of the past much

like public telephones, CDs, telephone directories and even hand-written letters.

Only this week the prestigious Cambridge University announced that it is considering

axing compulsory written exams and allowing students to use laptops or iPads

instead, after tutors complained that students' handwriting is becoming illegible.

Academics say that the move, which would bring an end to more than 800 years of

tradition, has come about because students rely too heavily on laptops in lectures,

and are losing the ability to write by hand. Dr Sarah Pearsall, a senior lecturer at

Cambridge’s History Faculty said that handwriting is becoming a “lost art” among the

current generation of students.

“Fifteen or twenty years ago students routinely have written by hand several hours a

day - but now they write virtually nothing by hand except exams….As a faculty we

have been concerned for years about the declining handwriting problem. There has

definitely been a downward trend. It is difficult for both the students and the

examiners as it is harder and harder to read these scripts, adding that an increasing

number of scripts are having to be transcribed centrally, meaning that students with

illegible writing are forced to come back to their college during the summer holidays

to read their answers aloud in the presence of two university administrators. 

Formal typed letters, too, are going out of style. Where once a morning office duty

was to open mail, this is something I rarely do anymore so it was in the way of a

novelty when I received a letter from one of my clients asking me to reply to a job

candidate complaint. I was a bit taken aback by the formality as I would have

expected them to pick up the phone and chat to me, especially as I see myself as

partnering with my clients when I do a job for them. Even a text message would have

been better than an ominous letter arriving on my desk, full of portent, even before I

opened it; and when I did , it was to read of querying our company’s conduct during

an assignment. Our remit was to manage the number of job applications which they

had received, reduce the number to an acceptable shortlist and then using their

criteria, further select candidates to interview. The complaint came from a

disgruntled candidate who did not meet the eligibility criteria for the role – not ours

but that of the client. Somewhere in the process the candidate implied that a staff

member in my company had given the impression they were qualified for the job but

we had to follow the client’s requirements and we had empathised with the

unsuccessful applicant. It was an absurd suggestion because we work for the client

and in the work that we act as representatives of the client. Anyway, I was in no

doubt about the professionalism we had applied during the assignment and

explained to the client what had transpired from our side. It took a few emails back

and forth to explain what had happened and when we I heard no more I presumed

the complaint had been satisfactorily resolved and thought no more of it until we

received a second hand-written letter now complaining they had received no formal

response to their complaint, despite the lengthy explanatory emails, but what they

were saying was that electronic messages were not acceptable as a formal response.

In my mind, e-mails nowadays most certainly constitute proper communication and I

was at pains to point out that they are generally accepted as formal communication

in today’s business world and as such I was of the impression that I had answered

the enquiry responsively, acceptably and in sufficient detail. All of our e-mail

communication is accompanied by an official company signature, which I thought

adds an official stamp to the message: In the mind of my client however this did not

suffice –what they wanted was for me to produce an actual ‘Dear Sirs’ ‘Yours

faithfully’ hardcopy , delivered by my driver to their offices or sent in the post, which

will no doubt to be filed in a paper file in a steel filing cabinet.

Just like people in the past mistrusted and resisted the typewritten letter over the

copperplate, hand-written missive, examples such as this are happening all the time.

This is not a dig at my client because this is obviously how this organisation’s

procedures and processes are currently and as such they need to be followed until

such time that a new way of complaint-resolution- administration is adopted. It is all

over the place, this dichotomy in old and new ways of working

Let me just take my field to see where we are still trailing behind: take for example

the fact that to apply for a work permit one has to produce a copy of an advert

which has appeared in a newspaper. Many companies nowadays are not advertising

jobs in newspapers or would prefer not to – choosing instead online methods to post

job vacancies, yet the Department of Labour still requires this outdated means. On

the same point I also still see some companies who advertise jobs and require

candidates to hand deliver their application. Note to those companies - we will

never save the planet if we keep wasting paper and the unnecessary carbon

footprints.

I have mentioned before how Skype interviewing is the way to go…in this day of

panel interviews why assemble 3 executives from different places of work to all drive

to one destination to interview a candidate, who has also driven there, when

everyone can connect online from their home or office. There are countless other

examples of how our world of work is changing regardless of the industry. In the

recruitment business years ago we used to write letters or send telexes to

candidates but today we are more likely to text which obviously eliminates delays

and saves costs; we are even staring to text candidates for screening. Consider that

an estimated 50 million Millennials will join the workforce in the next decade and as

this demographic quickly overtakes Baby Boomers as the largest talent generation,

it’s important to rethink traditional practices and find new ways to engage today’s

workforce and attract top talent by shifting to the communication style they prefer:

texting.

According to a 2016 Internet Trends Report (KPCB), just 12% of Millennials and 29%

of Gen-Xers prefer talking on the phone for business communication. As a result,

recruiters like ourselves are will have a hard time getting younger applicants on the

phone and are struggling to screen a high volume of candidates efficiently. Using a

text-based platform eliminates those barriers. Plus, nearly 90% of recent graduates

and job candidates surveyed in a 2017 recruiting study (Yello) said they felt positively

about the company when text messages were used during the interview process.

Even compared to digital communication via e-mail, texting has a faster response

time and is more effective overall.

Which brings us back to Cambridge University and its illiterate student body,

composed entirely of Millennials who have eschewed pen and paper most of their

lives in favour of the one factor which separates us from the apes – opposable

thumbs with which to text and message: And before we mock, consider this.

Budding author Fiona Mozley, aged 29, short-listed for the 2017 Man Booker Prize

for Fiction, secretly wrote her debut novel on her phone while commuting. “To get

it finished I just had to take it one sentence at a time, whenever I could,”, she said.

Time, I guess, to redefine the word ‘writing’.