A Perfect Employee?

If you ruminate you have a know-how at hiring gift talent, a perfectionist, or perhaps spotting the perfect employees at your organization, you better probe over again a humble question to yourself, what is a perfect employee according to your company?

Jecinda, a hiring manager, for one of the multimillion dollar company, for 23 years now had a critical issue finding the dream employee.

The company with its rapidly growing business and a massive growth of future prediction demands the hiring manager to be more specific about who they want to hire out of the pool of candidate craving for the job at the company. Jecinda looking for her dream employee, a perfectionist during her talent hunt. She failed to spot the one during her approach to hire 12 employees out of 111 interviews done. Everyone at the HR department startled.

The eight solid team member of Jecinda could not even find the one perfectionist they aspire for. It took them one week to screen and interview, huge amount of talent, effort and money was lost amid the hiring.

I have provided you the script, I hope no one care about what has been stated, Had the team stick to what has been explained to you, I am sure you would have had spot the right one. Mrs. Moody, Director of the company spouted to Ms. Jecinda, for her failure amidst spotting the perfect individual for the company. Moody continued, your job is in jeopardy if you can’t meet the target to recruit the people we want, I wonder how could your team not find one perfect candidate after interviewing 111 applicants. As she ended her frustration over Jecinda,

The company had a mammoth shortage, under staffing was causing a colossal impairment to its bottom line. Company had lost its 15.17 million Rs. worth of business over six month of period. Still company was hunting for the perfect employees. But finding the one was never easy. Moody was not sure why despite thousands of applicant applying for the job was not getting hired.  

Withdrawal of many clients from the company had put the blame of companies HR department where Ms. Jecinda along with her team members had to take leadership upon. Jecinda calls out to one of her recruitment agency manager to help post the job vacancy for the position they are looking for. Taking lots of interviews and using all of the company’s recruitment sources is the last option they are left with, Moody asked Jecinda to schedule meeting with all of recruitment agency managers, professional training houses, employment agencies and the tied up university and affiliated college.

I need an individual just to be perfect, our company never compromise on skills set and capabilities, Mrs. Moody at the middle of webinar said to all of the recruitment agency manager. She gave all the list of character that she wanted them to hire.

2100 applicant came in touch with the recruiter, 610 were shortlisted for interview. Company use different slots too interview them, some went to the recruiter and some just walked into the company directly.

The team did their best to hire the requisite number of candidates out of as many shortlisted for the interview as possible. Moody got all the characters she was looking for in her new hire. With better confidence, Moody finally gets her perfect employees. Exactly scripted, nothing less than what Moody’s wanted. The different skill sets and much confident in newly hired can be seen, Moody announced the best hire in all time of her career from the past couple of decades at the talent acquisition department.

Moody needed her client back now; she demanded Jecinda to coordinate with the negotiators to brought back the lost clients within the given timeframe of 2 weeks.

Moody almost micromanaged her preeminent employee, checked if they doing the work or not, warned them not to exchange a word to each other unless they have something fervent matter to talk about. Employee felt toxicity intensification inside the corporate culture with the way Moody control, behave and treat her employees. The best of the best employees did not sense worthy to be a part of the company.

 Moody experience the highest turnover in her life time career. Jecinda was about to get fired for her inability to handle the situation.

Do you know what went wrong? Moody asked to Jecinda, I am about to figure out. I think there is no such called perfect employee, I think perfectionist are just a myth. A myth? what is your understanding on hiring employee? and you don’t explain me about what shape and size do the perfectionist come.  Moody showed her bellicosity to Jecinda.

Jecinda in her rejoinder, I hope we have hired as per what you have demanded for, but what happed now, most of them left, and the turnover is still on, and you have no idea about how many talents we are going to lose this quarter. And not to forget the deadline for few project is round the corner. No more proficient employees are with us. And you still hunting for your dream employee. And you never knew who is that going to be. And with what shape and size he/she is going to be to identify as a perfect employee. I don’t understand why you so obsessed about it. You could have better sustain best employee to make them the perfect one for the company. She halted

I am not going to compromise on talents and open the door for anything less than a perfect employee, I will never let anyone do that, Moody in reply to Jecinda. If you don’t want to compromise then you must give the best hire an opportunity to innovate, try not to micromanage them. Jecinda riposte to Moody, develop and craft them and don’t waste time waiting till long.

Hiring someone with right attitude and trainable but smart and later developing them as a perfectionist, should have been in company’s agenda. Without understanding company’s corporate culture, no employee is said to be a perfect one.

No one knows what exactly moody has inside her mind, Jecinda never knew. Moody’s expectation remains always high for the talent acquisition; it is only then the assumed talent exist.

“I could have told Moody to find the right attitude with high EQ” Jecinda reminisce her days with Moody. It was never possible for Jecinda to counsel moody, as she was too adamant on her hunt to the perfect employee.

It is never wrong to hire less talented, but trainable, smart needs autonomy that’s how innovation drifts. But the perfectionist is just a myth, Jecinda told as she was dealing with her interviewer. You are the perfect employee, I had interviewed more than 10,000 applicants so far in my career, but finding the one whose values and experience are pretty much align with our philosophy just like a myth, but today I got my perfect employee. Mrs. Moody at her interview with Jecinda, after she left the company and started her own.

20 years later, Mrs. Moody interviewing Jecinda for her own company after the company shut down forever. The other interviewer asked Jecinda if she had anything to ask before they wrapped up. Jecinda in return asked them, are you a perfect Manager? Mrs. Moody and the other hiring manager looked at each other. Jecinda was not surefire if they were both a perfect manager.

“That’s why I oppose the idea of hunting the perfect employee, thank you so much for the opportunity. If anyone have something different to share, I will better share this stage with you”. There was a huge round of applause as Jecinda finished her speech at the International Conference on ‘Talent Acquisition And Global Workforce Management’.

                                                                                                                                                       

Author: Mr. Rajesh Bhandari

Program Director: Brixton College, BBA Program, Mahendranagar

President: PVP Nepal Province No. 7, Nepal

Cell: 9805422784

Mail: tfabodoc@gmail.com