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Enemy at the Gates
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from social workers, psychologists, and criminal justice officials.
When evaluating psychopathy, researchers combine their interview
notes with what others have observed and documented in the record.
Having access to collateral information is as important to screening
for psychopathy as it is to making the right hiring decision. While
the company has a different objective in mind and rarely probes into
the deep psychological motives of an applicant, a solid selection process
has the potential for capturing enough information about the
applicant’s behavior at least to raise some red flags.
Executive Hiring and Promotion
When trying to fill technical positions, having clear job requirements
eases the hiring process. There are certain things that chemists, engineers,
computer programmers, and financial analysts, among others,
are expected to know, and specific experiences that they are expected
to have had at various points in their careers, making the screening
of candidates somewhat straightforward. The selection of a senior
manager is significantly more difficult. One reason for the difficulty
in selecting the right executive is that the nature of the executive’s
job is so amorphous or so tailored to the individual that it is difficult
to ascertain exactly what knowledge, skills, abilities, and attitudes are
required. It should be obvious to the reader by now that a good job
description is critical to understanding the qualifications to be sought
in new hires and promotional candidates. Unfortunately, many executives
we have met just do not have an adequate job description with
which to work.
Also, there is some overlap between things psychopaths do and
good executives do, at least on the surface. A complete understanding
of the differences is important because one can be mistaken for
the other, and the amount of damage a high-level bad hire can do to
the organization can be significant.