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Integrity, trust, then skills

“In looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence and energy. If they do not have the first, the other two will kill you.”

This sentiment, expressed by Warren Edward Buffett, Amercan business magnate, widely considered the most successful investor of the 20th century, neatly encapsulates one of the biggest dangers facing modern business; although, I suppose, charlatism has been around since Charles Dickens exposed such rogues as Uriah Heep, Caroline Jellyby and Alfred Jingle.

The urbane, worldly and apparently emininently employable man or woman applicant for a senior position with your company could well be anything but. Behind the polished fingernails and military tie, disarming smile and knowledgeble patter and impeccable references and qualifications could lurk characters so dubious that if you had known more about them at the interview stage, you might have thought twice about employing them.

This particular Buffett philosophy, one of his many, resonates with my own take on the issue. In screening candidates for positions with our clients’ companies, we have fine-tuned techniques to identify those with that most essential component of all: integrity.

And that is why companies like ours are invaluable for digging the nugget out of the overburden: identify the integrity and then make sure the energy and intelligence work for you. That aspect will be easier when your employee selection has recognised such essential properties as decency, hard work and a sense of fair play. With that as the bedrock, the application of inherent intelligence and energy will surely follow.

And that is what the process of competent screening means to the employer. Done correctly it will reveal what you need to know and cut the hiring risk significantly.

A question of trust

Buffet’s aphorism coincides with our company’s new direction in claiming its place on South Africa’s corporate security landscape. Our intention is to combine our Orange and iFacts companies into one streamlined operation, iFacts, that is sleeker, stronger and faster in the way we help identify the people who are right for our clients’ companies.

Most specifically it is helping companies choose the people they can trust, both before and after the hiring fact. No matter how talented an interviewer an MD or personal manager might be, or how insightful a judge of character, the truly crafty and inherently wily applicant could slip through the net with painful consequence to the company. If a firm feels uneasy about not having screened some employees as thoroughly as they would have liked before putting them on the payroll, it is not too late to set that situation to rights.

A post employment screening will present various options. Depending on the outcome, the initial hiring decision would be confirmed, the choice would be there of retaining them and keeping an eye on them if there are doubts, or of dismissing them for having withheld vital information at the application stage. The power of choice is in the company’s hands, supporting the truism that information is indeed power.

Integrity is critical

Integrity is the priority quality we insist on for candidates for our clients’ businesses. And we find that through a thorough and painstaking process of gathering all the information about candidates we need and then sifting and refining it to arrive at an information based profile to present to our clients for their further consideration. And upon which to base their hire/do not-hire decision.

Of course, the workplace universe presents bigger challenges than simply of hiring or firing. Life, including work life, is a minefield of dishonest acts waiting to inflict damage. The opportunity for employees to gain through deceit can be difficult to resist, especially if the likelihood of being found out is low or even improbable. If the staff member does it once and gets away with it, then it becomes progressively easier to push the conscience aside and repeat the offence.

There are many, often wildly unintended consequences in the unpredictable art of employing and managing people. No candidates will be alike, each interview will be a different puzzle to piece together. It is not like buying a hat off the peg. It is more like selecting the person you think fits your needs and then hoping you have acquired a decent, hardworking individual who will add value to the enterprise and grow through the ranks with acknowledgement and fair reward. The trick is in removing the people risk.

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