{"id":8390,"date":"2018-10-15T11:04:10","date_gmt":"2018-10-15T09:04:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/?p=8390"},"modified":"2018-10-15T12:22:23","modified_gmt":"2018-10-15T10:22:23","slug":"how-not-to-recruit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/8390\/","title":{"rendered":"How not to recruit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Commenter Bardon graciously provides us<\/a> with a business case study to analyse. Here goes.<\/p>\n

We recruited a bloke recently to work in Dubai, and we initially were considering him for Kuwait, but the offer and acceptance was done on the Dubai role by me from Brisbane.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So this company has operations in at least two Middle East countries, but has no regional manager. Instead, things are run from Brisbane which makes about as much sense as running South American operations from Moscow. When I worked in that region, one of the first things I learned was Arabs appreciate physical proximity, and expect the regional manager to be in their<\/em> country. Before I went to Kuwait I was very briefly based in Abu Dhabi, and the first thing the Kuwaitis asked was “are you based in Kuwait?”. We quickly got the message we need to be based in Kuwait if we’re working with Kuwaitis. At the very least, the regional manager should be based in the region; anyone who tries running things from the UK or elsewhere won’t be taken seriously.<\/p>\n

He was based in Canada and coincidentally was in Doha when he initially arrived from Canada to get a briefing from our management team there.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So there is<\/em> a management team in the Middle East. But they’re not the ones doing the recruiting for roles in their region. This sounds like a confused mess.<\/p>\n

I spoke to him and told him that he needed to go and get some work…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So this chap reports to you, who is based in Brisbane. Presumably the management team in Doha is there for show.<\/p>\n

…and that we will support him from Doha for the moment and that we will start building a Dubai team on the back of contracts.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I can only assume you told him this now because it wasn’t made clear during the recruitment process. It sounds to me as though you recruited him for an operational role in Kuwait and, once he’d signed up, decided to put him in a business development role in Dubai.<\/p>\n

He came back to me and said that he wanted some staff now<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So he’s advising you of his resource requirements for this new role you’ve suddenly sprung on him.<\/p>\n

I said that he will have to wait and use the existing resource,<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ah yes, a regional “support” resource which he has no control over, yet he will be accountable for meeting targets. How drearily familiar.<\/p>\n

then he said we needed to negotiate, negotiate what I asked him, he said that it was a very senior role more so than the Kuwaiti one…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So he is confused about the role, and I can’t say I blame him. Obviously you spoke to him about the role in Kuwait (or how else would he know about it), then later changed your mind. A professional company would have supplied a job description for the Kuwait role and later replaced it with one for the Dubai role, with the differences between the two roles clearly identified. Obviously this didn’t happen, hence you’ve mobilised a person halfway around the world who is confused about the role. This is not good management.<\/p>\n

…and he felt that his package should be much higher.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Maybe he’s right, maybe he’s not, but you have changed the role he signed up to (or at the very least, left him extremely confused about the role he’s supposed to be doing). If you change someone’s role they are by definition permitted to enter into a discussion as to whether more money is warranted.<\/p>\n

I told him to see me after lunch, contacted the relevant director and confirmed that he was on the next plane back to Canada.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is the response of an immature child, not a professional manager. You have messed this bloke around since Day 1, changing his role and his country of assignment, and when he approaches you, quite reasonably, to ask for increased terms upon finding out the truth your immediate reaction is to fire him. This decision was not made for the benefit of the shareholders but your fragile ego.<\/p>\n

I then told him it was over and he backflipped to say that he would do the Kuwaiti role for the leer money<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Okay, seems reasonable. He pushed for money, got turned down, so weighed up that, having come all this way, he might as well give it a go. He sounds rather mature.<\/p>\n

, no way, you are out of here.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So your employee, who has done nothing other than ask for more money having been lied to about the role and stuck in the middle of a dysfunctional mess of an organisation, agrees to do the job he was hired to and you fired him. Wow, what a tough guy you are.<\/p>\n

He lasted about three hours.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And for this you wasted countless manhours on the recruitment process, plus paid for his mobilisation costs and whatever salary you owe him. On top of that, there’s the delay of several months spent trying to find a replacement. Probably the kindest thing I can say at this point is I hope this tale is made up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Commenter Bardon graciously provides us with a business case study to analyse. Here goes. We recruited a bloke recently to work in Dubai, and we initially were considering him for Kuwait, but the offer and acceptance was done on the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[57,43],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8390"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8390"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8390\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8396,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8390\/revisions\/8396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}