A case of overlooked talent

Tens of thousands - maybe even millions, if the rumors are to be believed - of victims of the "panda burning incense" computer virus must have felt a twinge of satisfaction when they learned that the author of the digital scourge had been sentenced on Monday to four years behind bars.

However, we should also take time to set aside for a moment our sense that justice has been done to think more deeply about the case.

A source with the procuratorate in Hubei Province, where Li Jun, the criminal, was based, said millions of computer users must have been victimized, though only 802 were recorded in the case, as many chose not to report to the police.

From last November until March this year, the virus affected computers in at least eight provinces and triggered panic across the country. While hated by many, Li won the reputation as a "Net genius".

After graduating from a vocational technical school in 2004, Li applied to Internet companies in Beijing, Guangzhou and other cities for a job in Net safety, but was turned down by all of them. "To vent his grievance," a Hubei newspaper reported, he wrote the virus and spread it online.

His action is definitely worthy of our disgust. And there is little doubt that his crime could never be justified by the fact that he had failed to get a job. Still, his case deserves some thought. Why did the Internet companies reject an application from someone who is clearly some kind of computer prodigy? Obviously they did not recognize his talent. But why? Shouldn't the process of interviewing an applicant help companies spot talented would-be-employees? The only possible explanation I can think of is that Li Jun's educational background was not impressive enough to catch the eye of the companies' human resource managers.

Many employers face similar troubles when recruiting new workers. Considering only applicants from "famous" universities while ignoring those from less known ones is a common practice. This is unfair in terms of an enterprise's responsibility to society, and also reveals a certain amount of ignorance on the part of human resource managers.

One irony of this case is that at least 10 companies have since expressed a willingness to hire Li, some of them offering an annual salary of 1 million yuan ($131,600). It seems that a talented job-seeker can demonstrate his/her competence by making some unusual or even unethical moves.

More absurd is the requirement among some employers that a person with a master's or doctoral degree from a prestigious university should also have had his/her undergraduate education at a prestigious university. In other words, a person who has finished postgraduate studies at a well-known university will still be overlooked if he/she had the misfortune of attending a less-than-famous university.

It is unclear to me whether such practices are the result of a sincere belief among employers that an undergraduate education at a well-known university is more important than anything else, or whether they think China has so many university graduates that they can delight themselves by playing pranks on the poor jobseekers.

It seems that we are saying "talent is the most important resource in the 21st century" on the one hand, while setting obstacles in the way of talented people on the other. Attend any job fair and one will find discriminative criteria of all types: sex, age, school, work experience and even place of birth.

To create a favorable social environment that will allow talented people to develop scientific and technological innovations, we need to change our erroneous ideas, both new and old, on how to make use of talent.