When Bad Job Applicants Can Be Your Best Hire

Some people dismiss certain “types”of job candidates out of hand, regardless of skills, experience or potential. If you don’t fit their idea of what an employee should be like, you’re rejected. This is, of course, illegal in the case of race, religion, disability and a few other things, but perfectly legal in many cases.

Is this wise behavior? Absolutely not. Once you start hiring people, the last thing you want is a bunch of clones. Instead, you should hire people who are not like you and won’t be your best friend. Look at how they will do in the job, and how they will help your company grow, not if they can all fit a personality profile. Yes, culture matters, but you should prioritize diversity and merit.

Fellow Inc. columnist, Steve Cody, wrote 13 Types of Job Applicants You Should Never Hire, a week or so ago. And, frankly, I disagree with him on lots of his points. In fact, I think you should look for some of these very people he dismisses out of hand. Not all of them, of course. I agree, you should avoid the Drama Queen and the Improvisation King and the Mobile-Device Maven. The last thing you need is an unprepared, phone tapping, drama generating employee creating havoc in your office.

But not all nightmare job applicants are as scary as they seem. Here’s when you should hire them–or not:

To keep reading, click here: When Bad Job Applicants Can Be Your Best Hire

Note: this is an older post, but I stumbled upon it yesterday and thought I’d reshare.

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2 thoughts on “When Bad Job Applicants Can Be Your Best Hire

  1. Actually, Cody’s excuses would work for those situations in which one needed to articulate a legitimate, non-discriminatory, reason as pretext to mask illegal discrimination.

  2. Good article! 11 and 12 are two of my pet peeves. If I give a candidate a couple of days’ notice that I am going to call, I expect them to know what our firm does. Typos on resumes and cover letters? I only hire professionals, no entry level/no skills/no education workers. Every employee is expected to have good communication skills. If their resume is full of grammatical errors and typos, we aren’t interested. Our employees interact with our clients via email, memos, and reports. An incredible number of people are being graduated from United States colleges without a firm grasp of English — including U.S. born candidates. It’s quite pitiful.

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