“It doesn’t matter whether they fit into the company culture, have the necessary skill sets, or will mesh well with other members of the team. All that matters is that the job is filled and the person making the referral is happy. Of course the happiness is short-lived when the new employee is fired for being incompetent or quits because the job isn’t what he or she thought it would be.”

The Right Candidate for the Job
According to Jenkins, staffing professionals frequently overlook the “diamond in the rough” of an above-average candidate with superior qualifications. “All too often, people allow their emotional responses to override their judgment,” she explains. In the end, they wind up choosing candidates who have mastered the art of being interviewed, rather than people are have mastered the skills required for the job they’ll do.

Feelings, prejudices and intuition can easily override judgment. “If a candidate is not a seasoned interviewer with dazzling presentation skills, he or she may easily be overlooked.”

The irony is that “It’s frequently the people with the most impressive credentials who are least impressive in an interview and do not possess the perfect resume loaded with just the right “key” words for retrieval.”