The dictionary definition of the word comprehension is “the ability to understand something.” It is also defined as “the setting of questions on a set text to test understanding, as a school exercise.”
You must surely remember that part of your high school English studies, where you would be given a passage to read and then a set of questions would be asked to determine whether you could figure out that an adolescent Tom hastily emerging with adolescent Mary from a bush would certainly end up with a Tom-let nine months later.
Last week, I posted on LinkedIn a request on behalf of a friend looking for an accountant. It went something like this:
“A friend of mine in the legal services industry is looking for an accountant. This person must be a full CPA (K) and have a minimum of five years working as an accountant in a commercially driven private sector organisation. Not the NGO sector, not government or parastatals. Private sector only please."
A couple of polite and very humble requests based on what I have seen someone else who made a similar post go through:
"a) Please DM me if you KNOW such a person. Please do NOT DM me if you ARE that person. My friend wants referrals, not the actual job seeker.
b) Please refer someone you have WORKED with and can therefore vouch for their work ethic and standards. Please do NOT refer your relatives, friends, neighbours, chama mates, local village cattle dip outgoing treasurer etc. If that person has held five accounting jobs in two years...well...don’t bother sending their profile.”
For purposes of those not on social media, DM means direct message. DMs are also a slow, torturous and very excruciating way to die slowly from reading sometimes inane and outright ridiculous privately sent communications on a public platform.
Within an hour of posting the message, it quickly became apparent to me that many of us see what we want to see. In this particular case, a number read the first sentence and came to a screeching halt at the first fullstop. The words “looking for an accountant” was all that was needed.
Consequently, the direct message inbox was flooded with ‘I am the one your friend is looking for’ messages.
Having sifted through those, the next set of responses to deal with were the ones who, at the very least, got to the first qualifier of recommending people that they know.
Many of these just tagged their friends who had accountant qualifications. Not the ones who had the specific work experience requested, just an accounting qualification would suffice.
Then of course, a call to employment action would be incomplete without the “my brother/sister/friend is an accountant” messages also filtering through.
Eventually the readers who quite likely scored an A ratings in their English comprehension exam emerged from within the communications clutter.
These readers had professionally worked with the desired accountants, stated where and when such engagement had occurred and recommended their colleagues accordingly. These were about 10 percent of the total volume of responses received.
I know it’s a tough job market and you’re probably saying that people are just “shooting their shot” and trying for jobs regardless of the outcome.
One reader, a senior accountant based on their self description, strolled into the comments and wondered out loud, “When I see a lot of demands, I smell a rat. But that’s just me.” Which comment has triggered today’s column.
Yes, one should indeed smell a rat. It’s a frustrated, exhausted employer of a rat. The employer on whose behalf I posted the message has seen enough recruitment candidates who look good on paper, interview brilliantly and then proceed to be an utter train smash of an employee when hired to do the job.
That employer knows that getting a candidate who has been endorsed by someone who has worked with them is likely to be a step above doing an open call for candidates who are a mix of good, bad and downright unemployable.
That rat of an employer has experienced employees with an incompetence that beggars belief and an immeasurable scarcity of integrity.
It takes an inordinate amount of an employer’s time to deal with staffing issues. Time that the employer could have spent on thinking about the business, getting new customers, serving existing customers well and generally being a productive human. Every hour spent working through an errant employee’s issue is valuable time lost that can never be recovered.
So yes, the two demands for knowing and working with the recommended candidate may be eyebrow raising, but a simple comprehension of the last few paragraphs here will explain their genesis.
Carol Musyoka is a former banker and is currently a corporate governance specialist.
Unlock a world of exclusive content today!Unlock a world of exclusive content today!
