Some of you may have missed this comment posted last week by Michael Cardus on the five Big Mistakes in hiring.

Comment
One area that is not mentioned is the manager allowing fear and concern for their own position to sneak in. I was talking with a friend of mine who is a program director. She said “I am interviewing people for entry level positions who are more qualified than me.”

Listening to her say this, I could hear the concern for her own job. The thought of hiring someone smarter, I may lose my job to the person I hired, or worse, that person, I hired, may get a promotion and become MY BOSS! YIKES.

As the job market is pushing over-qualified people to find work at a rate that they would not have accepted 3 years ago, managers have to work on their self-esteem to learn how to get their egos out of the way.

Response
This is a solid fear that runs through the mind of the manager. It creates a bias in the mind of the manager and there is no escaping it. Working on self-esteem doesn’t help and it is impossible to get your ego out of the way. This is self-preservation and skews the hiring decision.

Elliott Jaques observed this in his research with organizations. Those organizations that handled this, created a role for the Manager Once Removed (the Hiring Manager’s Manager). He describes this role specifically, as a member of the hiring team, to bring perspective and to qualify the candidate pool. Because of this fear, the Hiring Manager might hire too low in capability. The role of the Manager Once Removed (MOR) is to make sure all considered candidates have the Time Span capability for what is required in the role.

This is the current subject area in our Working Leadership series. We have closed our scholarships, but you can still register for this single session – Time Span and Hiring Talent.