When Things Just Don't Fit

Finding yourself in a new job that just doesn’t feel right? It is important to read the signs of a job mismatch – and to learn how to respond to them.

- Amanda Visser

the most obvious way to find the “right person for the job” is to have a proper job description, right? Wrong. It seems that this common-sense approach to recruiting may be the single biggest obstacle to hiring the best person for a job, say Todd Rose and Ogi Ogas, authors of ‘The End of Average’, in an article published by Fortune Magazine.

The reason for this is that most of these job descriptions are rooted in a flawed and obsolete way of thinking about employees. “That is, they look at candidates as averages instead of individuals.”

It all began in the 19th century when the notion of an “average man” came about and people were typecast – a soldier type; administrative type; or accounting type, for example. “It steers attention away from what is relevant and informative about an individual candidate,” they say.

During the recruitment process, the consequence is often that new employees either feel they are not really the right fit for a job, or they may feel they have been misled about what a specific job entails.

When the fit is not right

It has been said that one of the reasons for presenteeism (where employees are present at work but underperform), is that individuals feel misplaced in an organisation – they have the skills, can do the job, but the role just does not fit them as they thought it would.