A talented Thai professional who lacks integrity can destroy a company and serve as a bad influence to other employees in the organization. Therefore, the first thing any Bangkok company should seek out in any potential employee is integrity. However, this can be difficult to determine over the course of the interview process as people are always on their best behavior when meeting with a company regarding an exciting opportunity. So what to you do?
First, you have to seek out people who have had long term tenure in all of their professional roles. People with questionable ethics usually don’t stay too long in any particular job as their colleagues have discovered the person’s true nature. Once an individual gets caught deceiving their employer, the individual is usually fired or they immediately begin their search for another job. Similar to scientists who want to prove a theory, an employer should look to recruit people who have shown multiple years of exceptional documented performance at particular company. If day after day this person was able to impress colleagues, show up for work on time, exceed expectations and build a respected reputation within the industry, then you likely have a great candidate.
Second, you should always require references from the individual’s manager. Far too often these days, companies are willing to accept references from peers, friends, clients or people within the industry who have little if any direct involvement with the candidate’s daily job performance. This is usually a sure sign of a problem and companies need to be very careful before proceeding with candidates fitting this description. In defending this practice, candidates will usually say they can’t jeopardize their current job so they don’t want anyone who they have directly reported to providing a reference because its a small world and everyone knows each other. Although it’s understandable that they would not provide references from their current manager, there is little reason not to provide the names of previous bosses as references.
Third, always encourage candidates to bring documented results of their past performance for the interview. If someone genuinely won an award or has continually received exceptional reviews from their employer, they should have a record of those things because the executives at a good company want documentation filed for all employee matters, both good and bad. The idea that a company is going to give an employee an award without any providing any kind of paperwork is doubtful. So a company should be very leery of hiring any individual who claims to have won all kinds of awards yet has no evidence to back up their claims.
Fourth, any candidate whose resume consists of companies that no longer exist, are out of the country or have no website should be removed from consideration. Intelligent candidates who lack integrity are increasingly submitting resumes referencing Global 500 companies that went bankrupt as these individuals know there is no longer a human resources department to verify employment. So how do do you check to see if there claims are legitimate? Well, a seasoned interviewer never goes into any interview without researching the person’s background thoroughly. In cases when a person references a company no longer in existence, the skilled interviewer may ask the candidate about the company’s executive team and other detailed questions to see if the person provides accurate responses. There are also other background tools that can detail a person’s professional’s work history.
Fifth, the interview process provides a candidate more than enough time to gather references and anytime there is a delay in the person compiling a list of references, you need to reconsider whether you want to move forward with that individual. At the very least, it shows a lack of preparation and considering all interviews are scheduled with advance notice, there is no excuse to show up for a final interview without having everything a company needs to conduct a proper background check.
