Will You Hire This Applicant?

You are the HR Director of one of the most prestigious Computer Company. Your CEO recently fired the Executive Vice-President (EVP) of your company who was supposed to be the most qualified person to replace the CEO who is retiring in three years.  You have been tasked to look for a replacement who would be the best person to assume the responsibilities of the EVP and would be able to take over the CEO after he retires. Among the important qualifications that the candidate must possess are the following:

1.    Demonstrated team building and leadership skills

2.    “Out of the box thinker” must be key driver contributing to the products development and willing to take innovative product risk.

3.    Manage diverse, simultaneous projects of varying complexities.

4.    Strong relationship management, strategy development, project management, problem-solving and change management skills.

5.    Professional and positive approach, self-motivated, strong in building relationships, team player, dynamic, creative with the ability to work on own initiative.

A colleague of yours from another computer company suggested a candidate who used to work as a Vice-President of a progressive multi-national IT company who was looking for a job.  He described him as follows:

“He acts without thinking and with bad judgment. . . . He does not give credit where due. . . . Very often, when told of a new idea, he will immediately attack it and say that it is worthless or even stupid and tell you that it was a waste of time to work on it. This alone is bad management, but, if the idea is a good one, he will soon be telling people about it as though it was his own. At the same time, he’s a genius. His imaginative leaps are instinctive, unexpected, and at times magical.”

 When you asked why the person left his IT company, he said that he was forced to resign by the IT company’s CEO.  Your colleague however, knows him personally and not only that he strongly recommends him, but vouches for him.

Questions:

1.    Will you consider interviewing this person? Why and why not?

2. Will you hire this person? Why or why not? Justify your answers based on the Big Five Personality characteristics as described in the lecture slides in Ch 7

3.   In Ch7,  we learned about the Selection Processes and Procedures with the list of Commonly Found Perceptual Errors (Slide #20). If you rejected this person when he could be a winner or if you hired this person when he is a loser, which of the five perceptual errors were you guilty of?