Scandal-Ridden Firms Make It Complex For Their Employees
The concept of ignominy/ taint/ stigma has been elucidated by the sociologist Erving Goffman, who in the year 1963, set a definition saying “the phenomenon whereby an individual with an attribute which is deeply discredited by his/her society is rejected as a result of the attribute.” A degrading dishonour, which may be fair or unfair, undermines a person’s credibility in the social role he or she is attempting to play. Stigmas often colour the lens through which we judge people’s abilities to fit in at a workplace. To ward off potential biases hampering a dispassionate judgement of a candidate’s professional strength, a methodological approach may be followed. A hiring manager can attempt the painstaking process of first assessing a candidate’s traits and competencies and then determine how they relate to the accomplishments listed on his résumé. Additionally, he/she can construct a piecemeal work estimation of his / her person by consulting her knowledge of all the institutions he / she has been linked /worked with. This approach—creating a cerebral prototype of an unknown quantity using various known quantities on the résumé—is possible and almost automatic. “The image of the company is stronger than the individual image,” as one recruiter quoted for a study conducted by Boris Groysberg, Eric Lin, George Serafeim and Robin Abrahams. As a matter of fact, Hiring managers often gauge candidates according to their past associations. According to the study by the authors quoted above, “one head-hunter told them about a client, the CEO of a big bank, who declared that he wouldn’t even interview any candidates from two particular banks that had failed.” That particular CEO didn’t bother that many candidates from one of those banks claimed they hadn’t been able to do their jobs because the boss was such an autocrat. The hiring world is filled with plenty of similar anecdotes. In India too, Satyam employees had to deal with the difficulties created by the firm as they grappled with the organisational infamy in light of the scandal. Thus employees bear the brunt of blunders committed by the organisation and only an aware, cautious executive search can alleviate the bias they face.
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