Find Out The #1 Attribute Organisations Miss When Hiring Candidates

Action. Yeah.

Hello, everyone and welcome back.

Wow.

Back to 2021. This is the first episode I'm glad to have Sean and Fear from Suicide and myself from Naked Insider. And we've got Edward Barker from Cleared Agency. So before we start, we're going to reveal in this video why what's the number one thing organizations miss when they employ a new candidate and why that could lead to a potential risk at the later stage. So, Sean, welcome back again.

Thank you, mate.

Let's go over what is trust and why is it important when we hire people?

Trust, such a big word. When I look at trust, I would define it as a firm belief that someone or something is reliable, good, honest, effective, etc. It is a confidence or it is the confidence in the honesty or the integrity of something or a person. And it's the basic foundation of almost every relationship in life. Now I'll refer it as the glue of any society. That's what makes a society. Without trust, there is no society. Its presence really cements the relationship by allowing people to live and work together and also belong to a group. And lack of trust caused fragmentation, conflicts and even war. When we look at people, for example, a trustworthy person should be honest, genuine and authentic. And lacking of trust allow potential development of harmful thoughts, actions, even emotional, such as negative attributions or suspicion, jealousy, even aggression. And over time it can lead to bigger problems. So in the corporate world, for example, it can definitely help to grow the insider risk problem when having the wrong or non trustworthy people.

Great.

Great. Thanks for setting the scene. That's, that's really important. And I want to add something which is, I don't know if you've ever read this book. It's called the Speed of Trust, written by Stephen Covey quite a few years ago. If you haven't had the chance of reading this book, it's very well worth it. Now, the reason I bring it up is he describes trust as an equation of character and competence as the key aspects of trust. So I'm going to bring now Avery Barker, who's the CEO and founder of Cleared Life Agency. Interestingly, you're one of the first or creator of the first, what do you call it, the civilian suitability clearance. But I look at you as Mr. People Risk Manager. So, Edward, why don't you give us a little bit more of who you are and I'll ask you the first question. What does character and competence mean to you when we talk about trust and when we talk about hiring people?

Yeah. Thank you. Thanks for Joining. Allowing me to be part of this. I didn't have. I've only got the water, so I don't actually have the tub, but we're okay. Hey, listen. Yeah, so our background is in. Is in national security clearances. And so we've been doing that for 11 years now for the Commonwealth government. And you're right, we've just created something called the civilian Suitability assessment or clearance, and that's sort of using the frameworks of government. And to be able to apply that to corporates that don't need a full or official security clearance, but still want to be able to have a measure of. Of character assessment done in their hiring processes in particular, but throughout their workforce. But it's a good question. I love Stephen Covey. I think I was brought up with him when I was like 17, 18, 19. I got his seven habits of highly Effective people. So, yeah, absolutely love him. You're right. And that whole idea of character and competence is so important. And. And I would probably say that. I don't know if he says that. I can't remember. It's been a little while. But it's definitely not one or the other. Right. So you can't just have a whole lot of competence with zero character or the other way around. A whole lot of character. But he's just really bad at his job, so you kind of have to have both. And I would even say if you have a mathematical equation that it's not a C plus C character plus competence, but. But it will be C multiplied by C. So character or competence times multiplied by character. Because I think there's something about that that kind of accentuates both of them. You need both and they amplify each other. But it was interesting because there was a Supreme Court judge that had a quote in terms of talking about character, talking about these things. He said, character has a clear intrinsic value. It's inseparable from the idea that it's better in any walk of life, including serving of others in corporate world, let's say, to act reliably and with virtue, with fidelity, with honesty, responsibility, and appropriately, with a clear sense of proper, legitimate purpose. And this is what I found interesting. Unaffected by the corruptive, by the corruptive and the perverse. And so when I thought of that, I thought, gee, that's. That's a really interesting way to describe character and not necessarily defining it, but just kind of describing it. I don't know if you read any of Dan Brown's novels, but there was one that he wrote a Few years ago now that he actually used the word sincerity or integrity or character for. And used kind of went back to where the roots came from, which was a thing called without wax. And it came out of, I think it was like, you know, the stone statues that are in, you know, ancient Greek and all those. They have people that fashion those and put them together. And the idea of without wax meant that some of them, if they chopped off an ear accidentally, they would put wax in its place, which was fine if you tried to sell it on ebay at the time, but if it then started to get really hot. So Middle east is pretty hot as well. Yeah, you start to melt. And so at 45 degree heat, let's say this starts to melt. And so that ear or the nose or perhaps a private part, wax just completely removes it. And so the idea there of the wood is sincerity or integrity came out of this idea of without wax. So it was a whole, it was a one. And you think about mathematics, talking about maths again, but the idea of an integer is a 1 or 0. It doesn't have a partial, it doesn't have a point, decimal point. It's just a whole. And so when you start thinking of character and start thinking of those types of things, yeah, I see character and competence being really part of the whole person. And it's important for us to be able to look at that in some definitive and more qualitative way than potentially we've done before.

Okay. I just think for the viewers, how do we simplistically define what is character and what is competence? And the next question is then is, why do we only look at, when we hire people, just on competence only? Predominantly.

Yeah, Sean, I'll take a stab first if you'd like. But there's probably, you know, it's important because staff have access to information and to resources and to people that are valuable to the organization. So they're placed in what we call a position of trust. So they may have access to IP or profits or reputation is really valuable. And so to have any of those reduce because of character or issues like that with wax, it causes problems. So I'll give you an example. So retail industry In Australia lost $9 billion last year alone. And that was just theft. Now, most of that people would go, yeah, that's fine, that's shoplifting, that's someone coming out. But the Australian Retail association said, no, that's not the case in some of those areas. And some of those sectors, inside subsectors, 90%, 90% of the what they call shrinkage is actually employee theft. So there's some big issues in terms of trying to figure out. So when people move into a position of trust, character, and if you want to, if you want a quick definition of character, I think John Maxwell called it who you are when no one's looking. Character counts, Character matters. And so think about the three Royal Commissions recently. So the sex abuse, religious institutions in a position of trust. You've got bankers in a position of trust and you've also now got, just a week or two ago, you got the aged care. All three, in their final recommendation said you need to increase your. Enhance your screening processes because people in position of trust aren't being checked. So I would say that, yeah, there's challenges there, but that's why it's important, because when no one's looking, what are they doing? Are they doing the right thing?

Correct. So I'm just going to add the notion from this book again. So the way that Stephen Coffee refers to it is that basically characters combine of intent and integrity, while. While the. The capability and the competence is based on the results. So the skills, the references, the resumes and so forth. So my next question to you, Edward, is what is the percentage of people faking their resume, for example, or being dishonest when they're actually applying for as a candidate?

Yeah, there's. There's lots of different types of stats out there, I think. Last one, Forbes magazine said 84% have a discrepancy or an issue or an anomaly or just an outright lie in their cv. So. So, I mean, you think about it, there's pressure. You. You want to be put in the best place and positioned. Well, you want that. That interview, let's say, and so you're going to potentially put something inflated that is. That may not be true. So, yeah, there's issues there. Now, a lot of that can kind of get sifted through before it even gets shortlisted, but, yeah, up to 84% have got.

Sean, I'm going to answer that question.

Why or how come that situation allow that to happen during an interview? People like to embellish their CVs, all the references they provide, all the stories they make based on some truth, but they will never talk bad about themselves. We all know the traditional questions of recruiters and future bosses. What is the tell me one thing bad about yourself or what others? So we don't tend to talk bad about ourselves. So what makes that situation easy to lie?

Yeah, I mean, think about. You've got half an hour to Present your best, put your best foot forward. You don't want to be stuck talking about other issues that don't put you in a good light. So you may want to talk about it or you may want to address it, but at that moment in that interview, it's not the right place normally to be able to handle it. So it is. It's tricky for a recruiter or a hiring manager or that person who's doing that interview to really want to. There's probably bigger fish to fry in terms of competence let's say to go. Let's make sure this person can do what he can say he can do. He can talk the good talk and be able to provide and deliver the results. So yeah, it's a tricky one. You only got a very, very short amount of time to be able to handle things that, that could get complicated and could get messy really quickly.

Yeah. So Sean, from, from your perspective, I was going to ask you the question. So what would happen to an organization as a result of bad hiring?

Look, I think first of all if we look at character, I think or personality, it's a scientific proven of prediction of performance and assessing the candidates behavioral tendencies in a work environment and it's allow us to understand their individual future contribution to the organization as well as the impact on the business culture and bed hire. I guess it results in loss of productivity, general business risks, bad impact on the population or the culture. And that's a problem if you don't pick the right employee. And you know, if you look at daily life or every day, we look at the dating scene, right, we go and interview future partners, we tend to look at their character when we look at future mates or future partners at work for some reason and by the way, when we look to go to first or second date, we always assess the character. Maybe it's of course there is some chemistry there, etc. But the main factor is character. Whether it's a good fit for us as a partner. When we look at the corporate world for some reason, and correct me if I'm wrong, Edward, we they more assess the skills and the competence because they look at how fast this candidate can be productive and can produce money. Sometimes they compromise on the character, first of all because they don't have the right tools to assess it. And second, maybe, I don't know, maybe they're afraid to find things that will push away good performer but they don't look at the impact on the culture. So we can have very good programmers, very good CFOs or CEOs, but they act or they behave very bad to the employees and it results in a very non healthy corporate culture.

Yeah. I mean, right now, I don't know if you have to see anything in the news, but the whole misconduct in the workplace and the sexual issues that are going on right now, there are significant claims and issues that are going on in the workplace. So, yes.