Dealing with conflicts of interest in recruitment

At the start of my career I heard one leader saying the following “I cannot select her, because she is my partner”. I went on to explain this leader that letting a personal relationship cloud a professional decision would be the worst decision and that his partner shouldn’t be eliminated of the process just for that reason. She did get the job in the end (as she was clearly the top candidate) and went on to deliver the goods.

However, the most common challenge recruitment companies face today are the conflicts of interest that arise in their work in a different manner – it’s the pressure to get someone ahead of the competition on a given recruitment process.  

The one task a recruitment agency must adhere to is to recruit the best fit for the given position. When that goal is clouded by ensuring that a certain candidate, due to his/her affiliation needs to be put forward, then the process is immediately questionable and loses all credibility.

Throughout my career I have seen this happen countless times and it seems the trend is increasing these days (when opportunities start getting scarce, people start losing their shyness about requesting “personal favors”).

A big corporation decides to recruit 30 graduates and if you look closely you will surely find family links amongst some of the chosen ones. Now, I am not saying that being from the same family should work against a candidate. As long as the initial goal stays in view “select the best fit for the profile” there is no issue as to whom is selected.

The problem arises, when the sons, the daughters, the cousins, the nieces, are the amongst the worst candidates and still find their way in.

As a company working in recruitment and participated in a number of mass recruitment processes I think there are couple of things one should do to protect its reputation.

1. Be clear upfront that if you take this job you have 100% say on who gets to the final shortlist of candidates
2. Be clear that in taking the project you will only select the best fit candidates regardless of their affiliations
3. Be clear in your communication that if after the process is done, mysteriously someone gets pulled to the program, you will protect your image by communicating that such candidate was not selected by your company (you need this to protect your reputation).

In short, as a company you have 2 ways of looking at this trend. You can take the short view and to win a project you don’t mind bending your company values (if you have them) or you can take the long view and stick to your values even if that costs you a particular project.

Risking a reputation to satisfy an obsessive family member is never a smart choice, especially in todays connected world when the moment after a bad candidate gets in, the whole world know about it in social media.

Stick to your values, you’ll win in the long run.