A job applicant went for a job interview in a medium scale company. He was rightly suited for the job as he qualified in most of the skill sets for the job. Eventually he was not employed because he was above the required age.
Assessing this discrimination for employment especially on age difference which companies have employed based on trend rather than on hiring right based on skill and ability, the Head of Jobberman, Nigeria’s foremost recruitment platform that helps employers and jobseekers solve their recruitment and employment challenges, Foluso Agbaje said this kind of discrimination automatically excludes better qualified candidates in the labour market. There are also some biases against some men and women.
Recruitment needs to leave of some biases behind as the world progresses towards a focus on hiring for the right fit based on skill and ability, not on the notion of what the right candidate looks like on paper, she said recently in an interview.
According to her it is important that when employers are looking for a candidate, they know exactly which areas they are willing to compromise on for different roles without disqualifying candidates who have potential but don’t tick all the boxes.
Foluso Agbaje further said that modern-day recruitment literature suggests that to be best placed for the future of work; companies should be assessing the critical skills their organizations need to have the right competitive advantage.
This implies that to hire right, companies will need to hire candidates who have the critical skills that have been identified for the business. “This is where our assessment product comes in; by using an assessment you can immediately see what skills the applicants have and at what level because the assessment report shows you the level of proficiency the candidate has based on their answers”.
Agbaje who was management Consultant in KPMG’s Lagos office, serving private and public sector clients primarily on People & Change projects advised HR professionals and recruiters that recruitment is an art not a science; “there is no one size fits all recipe for recruiting for all roles across various organisations. What this means is that you might need to tailor your recruitment strategy for each open role in your organization to ensure that you are getting the best fit”.
