Admitting your mistakes may be your strength

Dear Lloyd,

I am a recruitment specialist in a contact center here in Makati for two years now. I’m enjoying my work except that I really find it hard to recruit the ‘right people for the job.’ After a month or two, many of our employees leave the company. Am I to be blamed here? What do I need to do?

Thank you so much and more power to your column!

(Please have my name and address withheld)

First, I sincerely believe that no one has to be blamed. Because if there is, then it could be the decision-makers of your company who don’t do well in people management, the employees themselves who are not passionate about their jobs, the government whose ‘only’ option is to employ the unemployed in call centers, or the parents who don’t really have the time guiding their sibling’s career. It’s more complicated than you can think.

But one good advice I can give is a simple philosophy of mine. Whenever I’m asked to give a lecture on career, I emphasize this idea: “Admitting your weakness is strength.”

Some recruitment specialist I know also gave me such headache. And they, too, seem to take the blame for that. Some of them even admitted that they really don’t have any idea on how to spot a committed applicant, which is as hard as I only could imagine. Considering the motivation of job-seekers, I bet recruitment specialists should do their homework beyond the nature of their function as recruiter. They must research and take some advance, if not additional basic, courses on psychology and other related studies.

I see a positive attitude with these people. They know that something within their role is wrong. They could have told me that it’s other business that employees resign. But they did not. Instead, the first thing was to admit that it’s partly their failure.

The point is solving a problem starts with identifying the problem itself. When we were still in our primary schooling, our Mathematics teacher told us to identify the problem first, and then look at the given, and then identify what operations to use and then you perform the operation.

Having been involved is career coaching made me realize that we all have the tendency to deny our weaknesses, showing the world that we are strong and we are OK. The problem is we are not strong at all if we can only claim our strengths. We only make a fool out of ourselves if we do that.

Face it. We are not OK. And we must not be comfortable with what we have now for time will come that what we have today may no longer be relevant. Don’t deny something that will eventually compliment your personal development. I don’t see any problem in admitting a weakness. Only few are courageous enough to do that. And that makes me tip my hat off for them. Truth to tell, it simply means courage to me.

You problem needs a personal reflection. I can’t really give you the exact solution. I can only remind you to go back to basic problem-solving principles. If you think you are the problem, say, you really don’t have the bona fide capability to recruit the right people, do something about it. As said, you can always decide to study further during your free time.

Remember that the little problem of yours can be a big problem later, if not given due attention. Such attention may only need a few days to solve. Think about your capacity and take a good look on your applicants’ profile. You’ll see that there is something common among them. Of course they all wanted to get a job for a living. But the difference lies on the motivation that pushed them to apply.

Such motivation is very important. It could be one of the ‘givens’ that you can use to perform the necessary operation that will give you the answer.

Buddy to the top,

Lloyd