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.