A Brief Essay On The Ways To Solve Problems About Hiring The Best Job Applicants

By: Stephen K. Ainsah-Mensah

We know that the psyche of the individual is unreachable from the observations of others; but we also know that it is easy to access the look that an individual wears on the face. If so, why is it common to say that an individual’s personality can be read from the look on the face? Does the movements of the psyche have any direct connection with the foibles of the face? Or, we may put the question in a different way by stating: how does the internal goings-on of an individual together with what he/she has in mind translate into readable facial expressions? Even though this question belongs to psychology and its alleged school people, it frequently instigates business people to make decisions in their hiring practices on its basis, or it compels employers or employees to make critical judgements on the degree of likeability, cooperativeness and competence of a person.

What do employers, for instance, do in their hiring practices?. Now, employers in general have no precise means for telling the personality of a job applicant except to dwell - sometimes largely - on the rather imprecise but, supposedly, readily available criterion: facial expression. A smiling and relaxed face hints to them that the applicant is probably friendly, cooperative, willing to learn, relevantly ambitious, interested very much in the employer’s business, receptive to new ideas, amenable to human or structural changes that promote business, etc. Candidates who are fully aware of this significant component of the hiring procedure of employers but who do not naturally have the requisite facial expressions may go at length to practice on this job-related piece. Some of them may even hire image consultants to assist them to turn around their relatively unappealing facial looks. Eventually, they go for job interviews and win the jobs they desire so much. But, then, those other job candidates who are even more capable are refused the jobs precisely because they were not as good as those who got the jobs with regard to facial looks. But here is the rub! The sincerity of one’s personality has gone unnoticed, yet a dressed-over personality has been judged to be sincere and granted the opportunity to fit into the business culture. What the businesses under study have done are a kind of gamble; but why? Because usually, some of the hired employees may, with time, underperform since their rewarded facial expressions do not rationalize their natural and actual competence on the job .

Of course, the natural personality of the employee should rule over his/her artificial personality! The artificial personality is a copied one projected unto the composite behaviour of the employee. But the finest capability of the individual for business growth ought to arise from natural personality. Some contemporary businesses may not flourish well due to contributions from employees who mirror artificial personalities instead of the natural one. What happens here is that the employees get very experienced in the use of trickery and outmanoeuvres intended to entrench them and win for them the workplace aspirations they have in mind.

Perhaps, employers should place great emphasis on the technical skills of the job applicant. With such a method, employers will be thinking and acting in this way: “job applicants must prove their actual competence by being assigned, during the interview process, some key tasks correlated with the jobs they are looking for.” This method may work well, but helps very little in wanting to find out how good the communication skills of the applicant is. Moreover, if the job is not really technical, then it may not be that practicable in emphasizing on technical skills as the chief criterion in selecting job applicants. So, do we face a predicament as to what to do regarding job applicants? Certainly! We might find an escape route, a redeeming optimism, and, thus, a reliable solution by sticking to this hint: look at the entire behavioural style of job applicants and how they naturally match with their talking acts and responses to questions! And do your best not to overemphasize facial look as that could be deceptive, unoriginal.

How We Make The Mistake In Thinking Specialization Alone Answers Business Questions

By: Stephen K. Ainsah-Mensah

A man has found himself tormented, on a daily basis, by frustrations in life. His repeated attempts at finding a high-paying job have failed. He studied Literature in the university and has proved to people he has happened to interact with to be far more than ordinary in terms of critical acumen. Ask him vital questions about business, management, world affairs, how to discriminate between right and wrong, and others, and he will surprise you with the depth of his answers. He is prized with the calmness of (his)thoughts, a striking body language that wins very productive attention from all sorts of people - that kind of attention that is great for a steady business growth. His speaking style is unusually charming. He knows the right words to choose when relating or interacting with different kinds of people matched with a captivating tone of the voice. But why is this man out of favour with employers and, accordingly, denied a fitting job? Has he shown some transgressions that employers see as discouraging to their respective businesses? Certainly not! It should be admitted that in this contemporary world the study of Literature may prove one's intellectual depth and answer some pertinent questions about the nuances of language and its application or connectedness to cultures, societies; but it may not prove the depth of one’s specialization in terms of business. Since our man in question shows plentiful finesse in the former skill, why not give him the chance to practise this at the workplace?

If this question makes a lot of sense, which I believe it does, then a good deal of employers fail to grasp the important connection between intellectual skills and practical skills. For a person who has a lot of intellectual skills can break down the skills into various parts of which practical skills - that are essential for business growth - can be part of. He/She can exercise the intellect in polished ways on a variety of subjects or topics that immediately connect to business or ultimately to it. What we presently have at most workplaces are specialized skills that conform to specialized knowledge studied specifically in a university or a college. So, for example, a man wants to be a business manager, first through an entry-level position, then he ought to have studied, by the predictable reasoning, business management or administration in school. But specialization of this form rids the mind of a broad scope necessary for relating directly to business and necessary for relating to other issues that could indirectly enhance business. A broad-minded person has what it takes to perceive and understand the complex world of business. He/She sees this world aright and acts accordingly to enable business to go on at the right pace. It should be noted that business is not just a matter of goods and services, but the politics related to it, the present life and life history of people related to it, the structure of societies and the people related to it, and other affiliated matters. Thus, we must be careful about the confusion we tend to bring to business whenever we talk about specialization.

Having said the above, we need not overplay the issue of intellectual skills. Certainly, our man who studied Literature cannot be an engineer, nor can he be an architect or a computer programmer unless he goes back to school to study the details of any one of these vocations. These highly skilled, specialized jobs need the special skills related to them, not intellectual skills. But if, say, a female architect wants to be a top manager of business, she has to broaden the scope of her skills to incorporate intellectual skills. What I am saying here is that business managerial skills are not to be equated with specialized skills but the generality of skills of the form: “how do we manage human resources, in particular, in a way that will maximize proficiency.” It is clear that stress on human resources is preferable to any other categories of business. Put differently, the final arbiter of business progress is human resources. Thus,the manager who rightly adopts human-centred approaches to business must prove to have intellectual insight about the affairs of business, not only at the workplace but in the world of business. If his/her scope of knowledge is all-embracing, so much the better.

Let me conclude by saying that what we miss so much in business is the fair balance of human-centred management and technical sophistication - the kind of sophistication that yields state-of-the-art products and, peculiar as it may sound, services too. But if we can realize this point, then it shows how far we are in recruiting the desired human resources to let business flourish in the right directions. Let us avoid the risk of misapplying the term "skill" at the workplace; and our man who read Literature should remind us of our avoidable errors. Above all, the question must be asked: Is the man who read Literature significant at the workplace? Yes, he is. Is Liberal Arts significant for positive consideration at the workplace? Yes it is. But job candidates in this discipline - or allied disciplines - have to be positively considered only if the jobs at stake are not strictly technical.

The Need To Fix An Invented And Inverted World

By: Stephen K. Ainsah-Mensah

The rooting of Western education in many centres of the world has naturally given rise to the growth of the stem, the branches and flowers of the tree of knowledge. That this has led to the flourishing of knowledge while debasing indigenous knowledge cannot be overlooked. Whereas this admixture must have widened the scope of knowledge of the recipients, brought - to them - a more vigorous understanding of the outside world, it has also distorted the compass of human and structural development. What we have seen, time after time, is the deliberate contention by Western encroachers that rhythmic and sophisticated cultures are/were unavailable in the recipients' societies. Such a risky arrogance invents a new wheel of human decorum that turns the natural progress of individual and collective personalities upside down. But encroachers build up superiority intuitions from this enterprise, which, with time, grows into a world-wide scope, diseased in many respects. Thereafter, all sorts of people glorify the encroachers’ values, developments, and strive to be part of it even as the values, the development of encroached cultures are put down for no good reason(s). Global affairs have proceeded largely from this unwarranted human arrangement. It looks as if capacities and talents are being laid waste through this invented and inverted world; yet, we do not, in most cases, seem to care - or fail to care.

The Misinterpretation Of Individual Liberty

By: Stephen K. Ainsah-Mensah

The liberty of the individual, propounded as a theory, discussed on paper or in public has frequently been divorced from established structures that contribute chiefly to the enhancement of liberty or its suppression. Economic structures, in particular, are significant determinants of the composition of individual liberty. When they are excluded in discussions of liberty, what takes place is far from practical. If this is the case, then it will be very inaccurate to elucidate the thesis of individual liberty solely in terms of the liberty to think and act without unwarranted constraints.

Societies from before until now have frequently faced terrible pressures that are the result of inequalities produced and intensified by varied human actions. The inequalities produce groups; and the groups are identified in relation to what they do, how and why they do things in characteristic ways, and, often, the degree of the power or/and authority that they wield. It is an undeniable fact that much as we claim that we are all humans, our respective lifestyles tend to be different precisely because of differences in our mental structures, the perceptual experiences that correlate with the mental structures, and the resulting dispositions. There is no need to ask about why this different-ness is the case other than likeness. The fact, furthermore, that our respective bodily compositions are different brings about corresponding psychic differences in concert with the correlated percepts and dispositions. Those who exemplify feisty dispositions matched with the kind of intelligence that stimulates the will to conquer are predisposed to be masters of life much more than those, on the other hand, who are filled with gentle, modest, cooperative dispositions. The latter group of people is inclined to occupy subordinate positions in the affairs of life or positions that are not, in general, in relation to power but spiritual or religious matters - or allied affairs. Subordinates are likely to pursue wants, execute thoughts without the aggressiveness typical of the said masters of life..

Sometimes, subordinates are lucky to win the recognition and sympathy of superiors due to their sheer diligence - and are rewarded as such with prominent positions. In some other cases, subordinates simulate the thinking style and dispositions of masters, which may lead them to express domineering personalities. The danger in this acquired personality is that it flows pretty unnaturally since it does not correlate with the natural biochemistry of the individual and is inclined to produce disastrous consequences. In most cases, however, subordinates are naturally dominated, controlled by the masters, and it is only a matter of time that they may rebel against the masters if they are pitted against them in a kind of daily interaction, directly or indirectly, that are meant to produce the “bread” for living. The rebellion, if it is gentle or soft, could produce better conditions of service for the subordinates. Violent rebellions could be crushed by the masters, or if the masters are overwhelmed and subdued by the subordinates, new human arrangements will evolve for the better or for the worse but, usually, for the better.

It may be asked: why will subordinates rebel? Are they not being ungrateful, silly? How will they survive, it may be further asked, if masters do not devise strategies to energize the spirit and material conditions of the society with innovative ideas and plans? Freaks of this master-subordinate arrangement are ready to insist that this duality is naturally induced and should not be tampered by human forces with the aim of controlling its surge. The surge proves that the master has the praiseworthy talent necessary and adequate to move the society to the height of progress. Besides, the master, unlike the subordinate, is a genius and ought to be encouraged as much as possible to bring out the best in him/her for speedy progress. On the contrary, the subordinate is destined to serve the master, to be in a low social-economic position compared to the master because he/she naturally does not have the qualities of ingenuity, or he/she does not naturally have what it takes to be a genius, a man/woman with talent . Some school people may even state that any violent confrontation that happens to occur between the masters and the subordinates comes, naturally, as a blessing; for it brings about progress in leaps, a kind of progress that does not yield to the silly interferences of authorities at high places.

It should be expected that in such a society where unbiased teamwork, rivalled dignity and respect between the master and the subordinate is disappointing, membership or access to social or economic groups will depend largely on one’s social-economic status. The supreme criterion for determining how significant a person is is via the economic route; and since economic power determines one’s status in life, it can confidently be claimed that the confidence and courage to do what one wills will depend largely on one’s economic status in life. Herein lies how the liberty of the individual is put to use!

One principal difficulty about this social-economic arrangement is that it gives room for the building of personalities that depend largely on economic doings and accentuates, with time, this arrangement. The masters marshal all the courage and confidence at their respective disposals to advance the course of their creativity; the subordinates, unable to compete with masters, settle for unambitious enterprises or vocations. In fact, this misfortune has plagued societies for a long time such that it erodes the fabric of institutions that turn out masters vis-à-vis subordinates. In addressing the key problems of the society, authorities must have brushed aside or failed to see how the master-subordinate duality contributes to this unpleasantness. Suppose institutions that exist are merely to enhance the kind of progress that arise from the doings of masters, then the doings of subordinates do not count - or they count very little - in institutionalized progress. Hence, the individual talents of subordinates will be sidelined even though they need to be encouraged to reflect on the true image of institutions to be established - or institutions that have already been established. We often think of talent in terms of some unique kind of creativity inherent in the individual; but uniqueness resides in every individual and is a matter of unearthing and advancing to the highest level whatever special proficiency one knows one has.

How badly societies will continue to deteriorate in the presence of this master-servant duality? There is no certain cure for the mental and emotional fatigue of both the masters and subordinates except to rearrange and, in addition, establish institutions to cater equitably to the talents of both personalities. For sure, authorities need to establish two parallel institutions with equal significance and merit that can draw into them both individuals with the master mentality and those with the subordinate mentality. The prize to gain from these institutions is very welcome in the sense that two groups of personalities are unintentionally created: groups whose members express, for the most part, individualistic instincts and very ambitious impulses, and groups whose members are in favour of cooperative endeavours. As we can see, masters will mostly belong to the first group while subordinates will drift towards the latter group. With time, there may be voluntary migration from either groups to the opposite group insofar as both groups retain their comparable quality and distinction. Societies need the equal attention and contribution of members of both groups to offset dangerous imbalances that could prematurely terminate laudable progress. For to downgrade subordinates or obstruct their progress, or to hinder the progress of masters is to project unnatural human strivings unto the society. These are avoidable mistakes.

If it happens, then, that the choice to be a master or a subordinate is purely voluntary, if it happens that such choices are, nevertheless, equitably rewarded, then an optimum expression of talents will naturally occur. A government ought to realize in advance that very unregulated economic forces that determine and entrench masters and subordinates are a foil to peaceful progress. And what this means is that the timely intervention of government is necessary to forestall this unpleasant human arrangement from developing into a canker. If a government realizes this problem, then goes ahead to establish different institutions and programs that appeal to the sentiments and temperaments of both masters and subordinates, then a lasting solution to disquieting progress would have been found. But, then, a government should make sure that whether a program or an institution is founded to please either a master or a subordinate, it should have a comparable value and dignity to any other programs and institutions. In that sense, the utilization of any program or institution would entirely be related to one’s uninfluenced preferences and inbuilt talent, not according to economic forces. We are used to saying that the liberty of the individual is the first sure step to grant the individual the inalienable right to pursue personal advancement; yet, we do not pause to ask: in what circumstances is the liberty to be found? Let us further ask:: what structures inhibit or advance the liberty of the individual? What an unrestrained economic system - that breeds the master-servant duality - does is to widen the scope of liberty for the master while the liberty of the subordinate narrows.