One Thousand Ways to Make a Living; or, An Encyclopædia of Plans to Make Money

by Harold Morse Dunphy

Necessary Qualifications

The employment manager, who measures up to the new standards now being set, is a first-class executive, standing on a parity with the sales manager or the production engineer. He has the more need of talent because of the newness of his position; a circumference which emphasizes flexibility of ideas, the ability to conduct investigations, the courage to be a pioneer, and the power of commanding the confidence of others in his pioneering. Again, his position is difficult, because he stands between parties which have been traditionally opposed to each other, namely, capital and management on the one side, and labor and craftsmanship on the other. He must always perform the functions of a mutual interpreter and often those of a peacemaker.

In considering a proposed occupation it is wise to present a sober view of its conditions, so that persons who lack a sufficient persistency and depth of conviction for success may be early dissuaded. Wherever there is authority there is responsibility; wherever there is reward there is struggle. If the general significance of employment management lies in its accord with the progressive tendencies of the age, the greater part of the energies of the individual employment manager is absorbed by the practical problems of finding enough workmen, of supervising records, and of hearing and adjusting complaints. It may be the lot of an employment officer to deal with a hard-headed proprietor, who is habituated to take the defensive against new plans. He may encounter the open or concealed opposition of foremen who, for the sake of prestige, cling to functions they can not properly perform. He may find organized labor cold to benefits which the unions have not won, and which look toward the substitution of a vertical bond, uniting employer and employed, for the horizontal union of employees of different establishments.

All of this means that the successful employment manager must be a person exceptionally fitted for leadership. He needs good native ability, made serviceable by adequate general and special training. He should possess a well-balanced and absolutely impartial judgment. It is a powerful aid if he possess humanitarian instincts and a sympathetic disposition. These must, however, be real attributes, and not a mere pose or policy, for no deception will long blind those with whom he is associated.

The person who measures himself for this profession should be able to find indubitable testimony as to the strength of his own character, in the quality and amount of his achievements, and in the regard he has been able to earn from responsible persons with whom he has been associated. He should find in himself, also, the ability to understand human nature, not through the absurd practice of some quackery of phrenology and physiognomy, but by having analyzed his own nature, and having found therein the instincts and emotions which illuminate for him the motives and passion of others.

With these endowments the employment manager should couple sufficient education to avoid embarrassment in the oral or written use of his mother tongue. His education should enable him to understand the use of general principles, avoiding the pitfalls into which the so-called “practical” man has usually fallen when he complains of “theories.” And this education should have had a wide enough scope to enable him to meet the minds of others, and cement friendships, in a world of ideas larger than the details of his work.

Finally, the employment manager is perfected for the practice of his art by general industrial experience and (if the position in view be in a manufacturing establishment) by actual contact with shop problems. This shop experience is useful to make the candidate familiar with factory tools, machinery, equipment, materials, and processes. It will instruct him, as no form of systematic training can do, in the meaning of factory life, the significance of its discipline, the meaning of its schedule of hours in terms of fatigue, and in the attitude of the worker to his job, his boss, his fellow worker, and to life in general. Any general social experience which the candidate may have had, which has taught him how to deal with people, not as individuals only but in the various forms of voluntary organization, will have value.

It is not to be expected that every candidate will be ideal in all particulars. Special merits may offset deficiencies, within reasonable limits, bearing in mind always that defects of native endowment are less remediable than those of education and experience. If the employment clerk and the labor scout of the past are to give way and personnel relations in industry be placed upon a new footing by an executive officer who is able to formulate adequate policies and bear large responsibilities a high standard of ability must be maintained for the new profession.

To summarize the matter of qualifications we give the relative weights which a number of successful employment managers have agreed upon for five principal factors:

	Per cent.
Personality	35
General industrial experience	25
Executive experience	20
Shop experience (for employment managers in manufacturing establishments)	15
Experience with organized social movements	5
Total	100