When you interview two equally brilliant jobseekers but with varying set of value systems, the decision as to which one stays and which is shown the door is a lot less taxing.
The one whose set of values comes close to the corporate way-of-doing-things will get the nod. But when one of these two far outmatches the other in area of general fitness, relevance of stock of knowledge, set of soft-skills consistent with the vacancy yet with values that seem to be not entirely at war with the corporation’s but short of few key values, a difficult situation may be brewing in the pot of the human resource (HR) manager manager who wants to deliver the best-fit to the department in need of the new hand.
The candidate in the second position, whose set of skills, are in deficit relative to the vacancy but whose values almost perfectly synchronise with the corporation will have less difficulties in the eyes of the HR whose devotion for the corporate values has reached fanatical proportion.
Faith-based values
For corporations who have an almost fetish adoration for the value systems that run their businesses, a lot more emphasis and statistical weight are usually placed on these values and companies such as these go to every length to make sure that they hire those who are either predisposed to easy assimilation of such values or already have an upbringing synonymous with those values.
Companies in the latter category may insist that the ideal candidate should be a Christian, a practising Muslim, a member of the union, a full-blooded tribal citizen, among others, as a way of encouraging jobseekers whose backgrounds are identical to these institutions and businesses to apply.
Others, for fear of being branded as discriminatory and possibly exposing themselves to public outcry, legal tussles and subsequent unfavourable press image, do not specify this in the vacancy announcements yet introduce these standards at the screening.
International NGOs that are set up, funded and run typically by religious organisations usually preclude jobseekers who do not share their faith from applying. The ones in the category that specialise in providing support for a certain group of people such as the physically challenged usually encourage their peers to take advantage of opportunities unleashed by bodies that support them, especially if such vacancies are averagely sedentary and largely office-bound.
At such job screenings, candidates from alien peer communities are usually discriminated against and offered opportunities only in areas where the members of the clan have no such expertise or where opportunities are foreign career areas to the favourites. In situations like these, the HR may disagree with her colleagues in the boardroom but in the end, if she decides to stay, she has to operationalise the biased rules.
The brilliant candidate, whose self-confidence level is so high it tends to dwarf the HR and temporarily fling her into envy, is likely to present the latter with a difficult challenge of opening the corporate doors or shutting them to an intelligent young person who may come and possibly start a race with her in a lot of areas in which she had earlier enjoyed monopoly.
Conflict of interest
Conflict of interests such as these have the potential to obstruct fair and objective judgement and these judgement flaws have a sure way of asserting themselves negatively in the production figures of the company in future.
The HR manager who had earlier met and acquainted with a jobseeker at church, mosque, old school reunion or any other social setting may put themselves in a potentially awkward situation when they have to decide the suitability of candidates, including the one they had earlier been introduced to.
Social groups such as the above may be great places to hunt talents but they may also be spots that dim your talent hunting lights, getting you to settle way below the optimum and compromising your high ethical standards. Unless you guard yourself against being overtaken by your affiliations to these clubs, you may be compelled to subtly tamper your independent screening exercise with the spirit of old (girl)boy-ism, religious consideration or by any other associations which may incline you to introducing foul standards in the competition.
A resident HR can frustrate a genuinely talented, intelligent and soft-skills proficient jobseeker under the pretext that their values and character formation are inconsistent with those of the company when the real drive may be totally different.
This candidate may have been sent home for a silly reason that she exudes an overly secular aura, is too outgoing (for a woman), may be seen as being excessively ambitious and perhaps, godless in values.
The HR being the steadfast, almost fanatical kind of demon-casting, conservative believer, she has personal difficulties adjusting to the liberal values of a young generation of intelligent, liberal-minded and professionally challenging young women in general.
When this pretty talent sat in front of the HR for screening, she failed to go beyond herself and her awkward personal values so as to think of the greater good first before her parochial, meaningless interests.
Unethical maneuverings
So many unethical maneuverings take place during the search for a talent. A lot of such unscrupulous activities are wrongly blamed on the corporation, when the true reason for the action may be personal.
The situation where either the HR or the supervisor under whom a prospect may work throws out the brilliant candidate for fear that when such talent arrives, the former’s influence may wane because of the sure possibility that the newcomer may shield them in their shadow is a classic example.
The manager, whose personal values are keenly challenged by a gifted jobseeker and a best-fit for the position, may be declared undesirable to the company when in actual fact it is the HR office that may confront personal difficulties when they hire the talent.
Firm, objective and professional-minded HR managers usually get around fairly well when they are hiring: they may accept CVs of club members, employment requests of siblings of colleagues of varying degrees of influence in the same corporation, certificates of church members and have to face and screen all manner of jobseekers and still strive to keep their personal feelings, value systems, and biases from interfering in the exercise.
Unless a manager has this kind of above-reproach attitudes, they will be twice as likely to stuff the whole corporation with friends, like-minded, church members and idiots whose output may not be enough to pay for the company’s outlay. GB