Five years ago, I nearly became a pilot.
Technically, I was actually a cadet pilot for all of about 5 minutes. I had applied for a cadet program organised by a helicopter company called Atlantic Aviation. The company was allied to the global helicopter services firm CHC, and they wanted 12 helicopter pilot cadets to join their program at the Bristow Academy in Titusville, Florida. Stage 1 had over 6,000 applicants and only 200 made it to the quarterfinal stage.
From there, 36 were selected to make it to the semi-final stage which featured a panel interview, powerpoint presentation and something called a WOMBAT test. WOMBAT — Wondrous Original Method of Basic Airmanship Testing, I kid you not. If you think I’m lying, here’s a photo I took during my WOMBAT test.
I actually passed and made it all the way through the final stage where I became one of 12 cadets awaiting deployment. I passed the psychometric evaluation and the NCAA medical at Kupa medical centre, and even got instructions about passing across my fit dimensions for my cadet uniform. I could practically smell the warm Florida air already. And then…
Silence and zero communication – Why does HR get away with it?
Instead of the anticipated email instructing me to send through my passport data page and requested documents, I got…nothing. I waited and waited, then on a Friday about 2 weeks later, I got an email from Atlantic Aviation’s recruiters with a subject “Your Job Application.” Obviously, that didn’t look good as you can imagine. I opened it, and my worst fears were confirmed.
“We regret to inform you…”
There was no explanation, no clarification, nothing — just an email essentially giving me the biggest middle finger of my life up to that point. The next few days passed by in a haze as I struggled to deal with my sense of disappointment and rage. How did I pass the recruitment process and make it to the final 12 that were going to Florida only to get that disgrace of a message? WTF was that email even? “Your job application,” really?
I have spoken to several professionals within the HR space to try to understand why this is the only profession in Nigeria where one can get away with behaviour that is objectively rude. Ever spent several hours filling in a job application and simply hearing nothing in return? Ever struggled through multi-stage interview processes only to be completely ghosted afterward? Ever had a head-hunter reach out to you with an opportunity and take you through an entire application process only to leave you hanging without so much as an automated decision email? Why does the Nigerian HR profession get away with all this?
For whatever reason, I managed to keep in touch with another member of the “AA 12” who actually did end up going to Titusville. He later informed me that the company only ended up taking 4 cadets, as against 12, which was why eight of us were unceremoniously cut and dumped. That did not come as too much of a surprise to me, because at the time toward the tail end of 2014, oil prices were tanking and the helicopter lifting industry was really suffering because oil majors in the Niger Delta started scaling back their operations. I was a victim of time and unforeseen occurrence, which I could perhaps accept. Shame about the dreadful, insensitive email, but OK.
There was just one problem – who actually ended up going?
HR is headless dancing chicken voodoo: Change my mind
This was where it all got very interesting. Bear in mind that the initial pool of 36 semi-final candidates was already very strong. The tests at the semi-final stage were not to establish competence against a benchmark, but to score us against each other. It was basically the HR Hunger Games. If a further selection had to be made from the final 12 to take 4 to Florida, you would expect that there must have been some sort of objective metric to establish who the chosen four would be.
Instead, as I later learnt, one of the selected 4 actually flunked out of the course at Titusville due in part to psychological weakness. This cost the company money that it did not have and cost it an expensive unit of human capital that its recruitment process was supposed to have secured. Basically, the entire purpose of the recruitment exercise was not just to establish that the final 12 were the book-smartest of over 6,000 applicants, but also to establish that each one was a strong, fighting character who would never back away from a challenge.
To put it bluntly, the 4-stage recruitment process was supposed to guarantee that someone costing the company a fortune by flunking off a $100,000 per person program would never happen. If perchance such a person managed to sneak their way into the final 12, the further reduction to four really should have weeded them out. How did obviously strong-willed, self-driven characters get left behind, but someone who didn’t last 3 months got taken along? Objectively, was this not a basic point of KPI failure for the HR practitioner concerned? So how come this was never acknowledged as such?
For reference, the HR consultancy responsible for this multimillion naira fiasco is still in operation, ostensibly helping its clients to select the best possible human capital as it did 7 years ago. In fact, the main decision maker responsible for this failure is a widely respected HR consultant who continues to make a living by apparently delivering similar value to clients.
I find this picture to be highly problematic. I see no evidence that a lot of what makes up the practise of HR in Nigeria, is not in fact, snake oil hucksterism. Every other professional discipline I can think of gets to face consequences for a screw-up. If a software developer consistently writes buggy code, they get fired. If a writer puts out drab or poorly-written material, they lose their credibility and stop getting work. If a cook messes up a meal, they get canned. If a pilot accumulates too many human-error or protocol failure incidents, they lose their license.
What are the consequences if an HR practitioner messes up the one and only helicopter pilot cadet program in Nigeria’s history outside of the legendary Bristow Helicopters? What career consequences do they face for losing a client more than $100,000 by selecting candidates using the “dead chicken dancing on a rotary wheel” method?
And if there are no consequences, then what exactly is HR and why do we even need it?
Questions, questions…
