HOW TO SELECT THE BEST CANDIDATES - AND AVOID THE WORST

By Adrian Furnham

Investing thousands of pounds in the recruitment and training of each new graduate recruit may be just the beginning. Choosing the wrong candidate may leave an organisation paying for years to come.

Few companies will have escaped all of the following failures: people who panic at the first sign of stress; those with long, impressive qualifications who seem incapable of learning; hypochondriacs whose absentee record becomes astonishing; and the unstable person later discovered to be a thief or worse.

Less dramatic, but just as much a problem, is the person who simply does not come up to expectations, who does not quite deliver; who never becomes a high-flyer or even a steady 30 performer; the employee with a fine future behind them.

The first point to bear in mind at the recruitment 35 stage is that people don't change. Intelligence levels decline modestly, but change little over their working life. The same is 40 true of abilities, such as learning languages and handling numbers.

Most people like to think that personality can change, particularly the more negative features such as anxiety, low esteem, impulsiveness or a lack of emotional warmth. But data collected over 50 years gives a clear message: still stable after all these years. Extroverts become slightly less extroverted; the acutely shy appear a little less so, but the fundamentals remain much the same. Personal crises can affect the way we cope with things: we might take up or drop drink, drugs, religion or relaxation techniques, which can have pretty dramatic effects. Skills can be improved, and new ones introduced, but at rather different rates. People can be groomed for a job. Just as politicians are carefully repackaged through dress, hairstyle and speech specialists, so people can be sent on training courses, diplomas or experimental weekends. But there is a cost to all this which may be more than the price of the course. Better to select for what you actually see rather than attempt to change it.

From the Financial Times