The Vicious Circle Of Bad Selection

Is it true that no one would hire any job candidate whom he/she feels would be a potential threat to him? And if this is true, how can organizations revitalize, rejuvenate, and enhance its HR capital? Is 'You're over-qualified for the job' tag truthful, or is it a devious technique to fend-off qualified job seekers from getting the jobs they knew they could do? What can organizations do to guarantee that only best candidates will be hired? What kind of authority should be given to HR Department to challenge biased selections of personnel? What role organizational politics play in recruiting and selection decisions?

All these are valid questions that comes to the mind whenever we encounter any of the unqualified corporate personnel who do not fill the bill for the positions they are holding; individuals who were lucky or unlucky to be at the right place and time to be selected by another corporate officer unqualified to conduct a professional selection interview and who might be under a deadline pressure to hire someone to fill a vacancy. There are several reasons for hiring the wrong person such as:

• A key officer in a project left during a critical phase of the project, and a replacement had to be found as soon as possible. As situation which might dictate what I call 'convenience hiring' rather than 'appropriate hiring.'
• Relying on recruitment agencies without a partnership input on the part of the client nor proper insurance guarantees of replacement of any misfits after field trying them.
• Wrong job matching, where a new hire is given the job he wanted not the job he could master. Some candidates can give an impression of mastery and false energy levels that deceive corporate decision makers.
• Man/day arrangements with clients may sometimes push for filling a position with unqualified personnel to give the appearance that all organizational contractual commitments are met.
• Lack of training to key position holders to cope with organizational growth and changes as well as customers' needs. That happens when their bosses are too busy to apply and implement a development plan to enhance both the skill and competencies of the holders of those critical positions. They had relied on them long enough on moving day-to-day matters to become indispensable even for a few days workshop to whet their efficiency and effectiveness.
• Relocating corporate personnel for personal or humane reasons are sometimes reasons for jobs mismatch where unqualified personnel hold jobs 'similar' to what they are doing at their home country simply because the corporation cannot find another job back home for them.
• Reaching a 'career plateau' when 'some old timers' could not advance any more in their current jobs and had few years to retire, and the corporation is helping them qualify for full pension.
• The wrong concept that HR personnel are the only people who should have training on interviewing techniques, and thus neglecting the importance of giving the same training to all the other line managers in the organization, despite the fact that they take the final decision for hiring.
• Lucky people who know the right corporate contacts who help them land job opportunities and sell themselves as long waited for saviors who are able to clean up corporate messes.

The impact of wrong choice is sometimes devastating to the extent that those 'wrong-fits' cause good calibre people in the organization to quit; meanwhile, they do not allow 'good-fits' being hired which results - the the long run - in 'drying up' corporate intellectual capital and a quick down slide of the organizational performance.

Amateurs trying to play professional games are very dangerous. I know of many cases where unqualified corporate officers were interviewing professional qualified potential job candidates for vital projects, but instead of attracting them to accept the jobs, had created very negative impressions and caused them to reconsider changing jobs, and turned down the job opportunities they had prior the interview. Those 'corporate Birds' could scare highly professional people that they might end up reporting to one of those who might turn their lives into a frustrating miserable experience. It is a vicious circle that, if turned into a whirlwind, may drag any organization to a fathomless depths of failure.