Character reigns supreme in hiring an employee
YOU CAN hire the brightest and best, provide them with the best resources and they bomb spectacularly.
Nowhere do we witness this more vividly than in sport. The teams that prevail are those with a strong culture.
If you are in human resources, you have to look beyond a prospective hiree’s stellar test scores, the college they went to, their glittering resumé, all-star references, and their perfect answers because these things don’t provide any insight into the type of colleague they’re going to be.
On paper they could appear wonderful, but their character is what you should really be paying attention to. Ivy League or not, if they’re not going to be a good cultural fit, you’re going to have problems. The workplace is a very sensitive ecosystem and when you introduce a foreign body into it, there is no way to know how it will be received.
Most of the problems stem from a person’s selfishness and putting themselves and their own ego above their colleagues. It can manifest in a myriad ways:
Do they put the last milk back in the fridge with two drops in it so that they don’t have to replace it? Not only is this one of the most selfish acts a person can do, it means no one in the interim has thought to replace it. There is nothing worse than wanting to make a cup of coffee late at night, only to find there is no milk.
Is she the kind of person who puts dirty things in the sink and never washes them, who never unstacks the dishwasher?
Certain smells evoke certain responses. If you go into the kitchen and detect the smell of someone’s can of tuna, you may find yourself on the rampage.
A collective fridge must be respected – can they be prone to forgetting about last month’s lunch which has since turned into a science experiment so it now needs to be disposed of by someone wearing a hazmat suit?!
Who thought making a cup of coffee could be so messy?
Do they use all the paper in the printer and never refill it? Do they jam the photocopier and never unjam it? (Do people still use photocopiers?)
They steal all the Post-it Notes and every day take a new notebook?
Are they so obsessive-compulsive disordered that they have to sit in the same seat every time?
The only opinion that matters is theirs?
Are they prone to confusing the workplace with a comedy club? Everyone wants to be the funny guy, but instead of Jerry Seinfeld, they’re George Costanza.
Do you have to resort to telling them the meeting starts 15 minutes earlier because they’re always late?
Do they make loud personal calls from their desk? It’s a cellphone – get up and move!
Not only do they spend too much of their day on social media but they go around telling everyone about the funniest thing they just saw? Five minutes later, they do it all again, and again.
When something goes wrong, are they quick to throw colleagues under the bus? On the flip side, they have no problem claiming the credit.
If they come in as a manager/senior person, are they overplaying their hand, misusing their power and so lose the clubhouse? If they come in as a worker, do they fail to recognise the authority of those managing them? – David Wiseman, Digital Brand Reputation Management, via Linkedin