Advancing the Mission
Gershon says “…hiring decisions aren’t often made based on market logic, and hiring is rarely a process in which everyone’s role smoothly aligns” (185). This is very true for Paul Eagle, Vice President of Marketing Communications for Catholic Relief Services (CRS), who juggles the tasks of handling not only public relations, but multiple employees and teams at the same time. I spoke with him this week about his personal processes of managing his employees, as well as his hiring process and how he approaches his work.
The very first question I asked was to get a gist of what exactly Eagle did within the company. “Our job is to do everything we can to tell the story of the work we are doing overseas…” Eagle answered. “The proper term is global brand management.”
When asked about his number one priority when engaged in the hiring process, Eagle simultaneously confirmed what I have known for a lot long, with an unexpected twist. “One of the things you learn about when you’re hiring and firing people is that you have to study the person — are they actually going to do what you need them to do?” He continued. “One of the main things I look at so I have an idea of future performance is their past performance. How they’ve excelled in life and so on. We are looking for people who are engaged and committed to something, that’s an attractive quality in the hiring process.” Eagle then highlighted the three main things that he looks for as a hiring manager — past performances, someone who has a balance of hard and soft skills, and engagement with the position or organization.
Eagle admitted that he had difficulties when it came to advancing people from within the company, because he was worried about that blend of hard skills and soft skills not being enough. He talked about how he had to be careful in choosing who to advance because, as Gershon says, “choosing someone is in a sense is announcing to others who you think the group is and what kind of person belongs in it” (201) Furthermore, “the interaction between everyone in the workplace weighed much more on their minds than their interactions with the actual job seekers.” (189)
I asked Eagle what he added to the hiring process as it make it easier on himself. He grew excited at this question and began to explain how he was actually in the middle of creating an online portal that would allow him to test applicants’ writing abilities before the interview itself. This reflects how Gershon discusses the technological developments in hiring online. “Many of their hiring solutions are their attempts to build parts of the now dominant-as-self metaphor into the hiring process more effectively than the founders think resumes and LinkedIn profiles are able to do.” (160)
