Quality of Teachers & Best Hiring Practices

According to a consultant with PEMANDU during The Edge Education Forum 2014, we could expect teachers who are currently in the Education System to be around and still be teaching for the next 20-30 years. This is a report by World Bank.

In other words, this could be disastrous for Malaysian Education System should we not be able to hire the right teachers to be in place, train and/ or fire or reshuffle the unfit ones to some other promising roles fitted to their strengths and talents.

Some claims that Malaysia falls behind Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore & Hong Kong over the past 20 years arguably due to our education policy changes. Whether this is truth or not we would leave it to your judgement.

In view of the above potential disaster, let us have a brief view of some Best Hiring Practices gathered from some leading International HR sources:

Keep in mind the different types of Personality Style, Problem-Solving Style, Delegating Style, Conflict Resoulution Style, Results Orientation, etc for different people.

1. Hire Hard, Manage Easy.
- It makes the manager's life easier and better by not having to micromanage and be burdened every day just to deal with people who cannot perform at the level necessary for the manager to do his/ her job.
- If all you do is manage, you can never lead. 
- More than just behavioral profiling & following the right interviewing processes.

2. Hire Slow, Fire Fast.
- Give people the Tools, Training & Time to turn their performance around. Once determined that we and they have made a mistake and that they are in either the wrong job or the wrong organization, it helps no one to have them linger on.
- The really compassionate thing to do is to part ways so that both parties can move on and be successful.

3. Hire for Style, Train for Skills.
- Consistent with the saying that goes, "You cannot teach a rock to swim."
- If you think you can change someone's personality, then you obviously have never been married.
- Any job requires beyond skills (eg: communication style, problem-solving style, stress behaviors, delegating style, coaching style, etc.).
- Most jobs involve multiple roles. Eg: Management Book Author needs not only to be able to work alone and focus on creating and developing concepts and then putting them into words. He or she also needs to be able to interact, speak and influence people, etc.
- "It's not just experience, or college degrees or other accepted factors; success hinges on a fit with the job." by a Harvard Business Review study.

Recommended Readings:
1. Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion and Purpose, Tony Hsieh.
2. The Everything HR Kit, John Putzier.
3. Strengths Finder 2.0, Tom Rath.
4. Bounce: The Myth of Talent and the Power of Practice, Matthew Syed.
5. Now Discover Your Strengths, Marcus Buckingham.