In the run-up to the Philippine national elections in 2010, I was asked by a friend on Facebook what I thought of the spate of propaganda in the heat of that year’s political campaign. Today, with only four weeks before this year’s Presidential elections this coming May 9, 2022, I decided to just update my thoughts that I posted in the Forum at the time and I am now sharing them with you.Propaganda is par for the course in national election campaigns, and what we are seeing right now will get even more brutal and bruising as Election Day approaches. Even so, we mustn’t lose sight of the fact that we are in the process of finding a Chief Executive Officer for our big company that’s called the Philippines, so we must not allow the propaganda barrage and fireworks to distract us from the need to focus on the basics of hiring.
I recall that when I was GM of a small service company many years ago, every time I advertised to fill a job opening, I would get as many as 100-120 applicants. From their looks and résumés alone, it wouldn't take me long to whittle down the choices to, say, 10 to 12 applicants taking into account their: (a) education and qualifications, (b) work experience and track record of success, and (c) personality. That done, I would look into the obviously important but less easily discerned factors of competence, honesty, integrity, trustworthiness—what we might call job fit and gravitas—and further trim down my choices to 2 to 4 of the hopefuls.
Now, by applying that same rigorous selection process to the current field of 10 Presidential candidates, we could easily narrow down the field to 2 to 3 choices. This is because if we are wise enough to discount the partisanship and emotional factor, the remaining aspirants are actually lightweight and insubstantial—with inadequate relevant experience, no evident record of achievement, no apparent leadership and management competence, no gravitas; some are obviously clueless, washed up, or deluded even. So, keeping in mind that we are actually choosing a Chief Executive Officer and we want him/her to make our big company grow and prosper and not drive it to perdition due to incompetence or mismanagement, it’s really a no-brainer whom we should hire from among the remaining 2 to 3 aspirants.
Go through this selection process in your mind right now. You will discover how easy and simple it is to make an intelligent choice among the aspirants to be our country’s new CEO.
