The Company Personnel

Summary of the case: The company personnel Robert (Manager) and Paul (Project leader) are interviewing two potential candidates Sonya and Jacqueline for a new position at the company. After interviewing both candidates Paul feels Sonya is the one they should hire while Robert believes they should hire Jacqueline. Paul’s reasoning is that he feels he’d work better with Sonya both being Caucasian while Robert thinks Paul may have personal feelings for his choice. Robert believes having Jacqueline hired will provide more diversity to the company, but Paul feels he is hiring her solely because of her race since it is stated that both candidates have the same qualifications. The issue is that both have valid reasons for wanting his choice for the job position.

What did/didn’t the manager do well: Robert handled the situation relatively well. He listened to Paul’s reasoning for his choice, but was quite set with his decision to choose Jacqueline already. Due to his opinion he didn’t appear to consider Paul’s point of view. Robert shouldn’t have made up his mind on his decision prior to meeting with Paul at the end. This prevented him from having an open mind about Paul’s choice.

What would you have done differently: If we were in Robert’s situation we would have tried to keep our minds open to consider Sonya as an option and take Paul’s reasoning into consideration. We probably would have still picked Jacqueline as well because we thought Robert’s reasons were completely valid. In the end Robert had a good case to not hire Sonya and choose Jacqueline for the position.