by J. Henry Stewart

Created on: December 08, 2008   Last Updated: April 10, 2010

Dasha sat silently in her office staring at the wall. Tony had been a terrible hiring mistake, she thought. His blundering and sheer incompetence had cost Dasha dearly.

Even today, she had spent a good portion of the afternoon making calls to smooth ruffled feathers after Tony had waltzed into a situation beyond his abilities. Dasha closed her eyes and thought back to her graduate studies in the human resources program, where the Spanish professor had given a few tips on how to avoid managerial hiring mistakes.

Criteria of the Position

Certain types of education and past experience are common descriptions in job postings on company websites, but other than in the most technical occupations, a modern white collar job includes many more aspects then one particular college degree.

For example, a prospective employee's listening skill is often not evaluated. The question "Does the employee change his thought processes and behavior based on new information?" is not answered. Progressive human resources departments will try to devise tests, exercises, and questions to address the listening issue.

Listening skills, political savvy, friendliness, public presentation ability and many other important real managerial criteria are often not sought out in the hiring process, with the predicable result of entering into an expensive hiring mistake. If only there were corporate mulligans.

Culture and Coworkers

The character of a person changes very slowly after the early twenties. A classic example of the mismatch of the personality of a new employee and the culture of the company is when a company hires an investment banker who has been fired or has gotten tired of the "politics" in the New York universe, and then decides to work in a "lower tier" industry.

For the first week, the coworkers think the new hire might not understand the culture of the company and that this adjustment period explains the rudeness, however by month six it becomes painfully obvious that everyone strongly dislikes - on a personal and professional level - the thorn in the flesh of the team.

Coworkers start whispering hurt feelings that they have experienced from the new worker, who was groomed professionally in a ruthless and individualistic culture. Often human resources personal themselves are the worst affected from the brash and bully behavior of the new employee, and the high flying ex-investment banker inevitably finds himself hampered with subordinates, coworkers and managers alike.

Goal and Mindset of New Employee

It was obvious to Dasha that Tony had already planned his exit from the company. She had noticed a full-time MBA brochure in his briefcase (it was sticking up a little bit and she could not help but see it), and she realized that Tony only wanted to put two quick years at the company, and then jump on to better things.

Worse, Tony realized a basic fact of large companies, that it was difficult to hold any employee to account when he had such a short time frame in which he wanted to stay. He therefore ignored most advice and counsel, and did the bare minimum in his job to keep himself from getting fired.

For Tony's replacement Dasha vowed to herself, she would investigate thoroughly the personality and character of the new hire, make sure that the next individual fit the culture and team environment of the company, and she would without a doubt verify that he or she had a long-term interest in the firm.

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