A clandestine mission

I am a regular guest on interview panels. Not because I am an HR expert of any kind or am I? My mission on these panels is more of the clandestine kind. Recently I was guest on one of such panels when a young lady walked in. She and the job on offer were more like plug and socket if you like— the perfect fit. I have not seen that in a long time and I began to wonder if the hand of God was at work in this young lady’s life. Well I could not think of a better explanation for such a mystery.

First of all, only seven out of the twenty applicants showed up on time… (Well you have to make room for the African mean time AMT) so no surprises there. Three were badly dressed rendering useless the host’s effort to impress them by choosing a three star hotel’s conference room complete with all the goodies—I did enjoy the earl grey tea.  Somehow the “you never get another chance to make a first impression” message has not reached some. More work to do motivational speakers.

With a guy like me on the panel, the gate just gets much narrower. Not that I ask the most questions, sometimes I never say anything at all as I feed off the question of the well… experts. My mission is to identify the performance conscious and the most purposeful people among the lot. And when I do ask a question, it will be trying to find the connection between the job being applied for, the applicants own life aspiration and their understanding of how the job in question can help them achieve their life goals.

Making performance consciousness and purposefulness the key, everything else kind of falls in place. You see, a person will place great importance on the task or event at hand only if they see how their larger existence depends on it. Such persons will treat the job with great importance and give their best, not because they like the job but because they see it as an opportunity to get what they really want and everyone wants something. One applicant was honest when she said;

“I need this job because it will help me pay my way through school and feed my self until I can get the job I really want”.

No! That’s not a slap in the face, it smells of purposefulness and integrity—the two are often allies and find a resting place among the many traits of the performance conscious individual. So what’s my point? Too many people have misaligned the life aspiration and the current objectives. Most are not even sure where they are on their timeline and this for me indicates purposelessness which disqualifies the individual as performance conscious. Since there are no businesses out there that do not want high performance, this is increasingly becoming a matter of concern. 

As we know, high performing individuals make high performing organization and the latter in turn make high performing nation and this is how we can make a high performing continent. Only two persons qualified for the job from my performance consciousness and purposefulness point of view. To learn more about performance consciousness and purposefulness, you are already in the right place. Attend a SPiD-UP® workshop, read a book or keep snooping around this website and your life will never be the same. Have a high performance day.