Never base your criterium to hire a staff on sentiments.

As a hiring Manager, hiring the right candidate with the right skill set can be dicey and difficult if care is not taken.

The tendency to hire based on emotional sentiment becomes very high, when there is a sudden resignation of a key staff or more in any team or an organization.

I will be discussing five categories of sentiments that can foster employing the wrong set of candidates for a job role. I can discuss this because I have personal and corporate experience of this scenarios.

1. Gender based sentiments
2. Qualification/ skills-based sentiments
3. Cheap labor sentiments
4. Tribe or racial sentiments
5. Religious sentiments.

Gender Based Sentiments:

For some sectors in the employment market, it is perceived that certain job roles is only suitable for a specific gender. Therefore, being a gender that is not a requirement for a job role, is the first point of screening out by the hiring managers. For instance, in the customer care job role of most industries like, tech, telecommunication etc., it is not uncommon to find the female folks filing in these roles. For some hiring managers, they believe that the female folks are more patient to listen, talk less and are more appealing to clients for the single reason of being “females”. But one thing they sometimes forget is, the temperament of the individual plays a major role in this type of job role that has to do with managing the expectation of people. Some male folks have proven to be exceptional customer care staff than females.

Also, in Engineering, it is not uncommon the find less females as civil engineers, mechanical engineer or project supervisors. The obvious rigidity of the job role which has to do with frequent site visits, mental and physical stamina ordinarily would inform the decision of the hiring manager to rule out any female applicant. Recently, we have started seeing more women given a chance in this field, they have even gone ahead to raise the bar for their male counterparts.

Qualification/skill-based sentiments:

finding a balance between skills set and educational qualification or certification is critical to0 hiring the right candidate. You can get your team into serious deficit of man power of you focus on the certification more than the required skill and vice versa. Certification and skill set go hand in hand. It is possible for an applicant to be highly skilled without an educational qualification to back it up. It is also possible for a PhD holder to lack the required skill set. Hiring such a person is s ticking time bomb. Although there are instances where highly skilled persons without certifications have performed excellently, but this is very rare.

Cheap labor sentiments:

There is a saying that “nothing good comes easy”. Employing a candidate because their salary expectation is lower than the company’s benchmark can spell doom. Hiring a candidate that knows what his service I worth is not a sign of pride or arrogance, but we must consider what the person must be bringing something new to the table. Rather than focus on how much the candidate wants to earn on the job, it is advisable to test the abilities and skill set of the applicant before making assumptions and conclusions.

Cultural and Racial sentiments:

As a hiring manager, your focus should always be on the competence of the applicant rather than the race or culture of the applicant. There are instances where culture, race, tribe or language can be a determinant to hiring. Roles such as customer service would need s staff that understands a particular language to attend to a client in his preferred language. Agricultural extension o0fficers are most times required to be locals of a community 0or at least understand the culture of the people or farmers for effective communication.

The part of employment based on race or skin color should be completely ruled out. Race should have no place as a criterium for employment in any forward thinking and sane organization.

Religious sentiments: the work place should be a blend of different personalities with different skill set all working together for a common goal. This has no place for religion or belief system. An employer who will switch his work hours for prayer time can never be a reliable or productive employee

In summary, as a hiring manager, make sure that every role or skill set is dualized at least i.e., 2 staff per role. That way, there will be no need to rush to hire. Secondly, competence and work ethic should be placed above ethnic, religious, gender or certifications in the hiring process. If all stake holders are aware of this, it will make the outcome of hiring, predictable and productive in any work force.

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