May empathy be with us!

Being a recruiter for almost 8 years now and also an observant person, has giving me a good perspective of environment, people and different ways of doing my core activity: selection.

But what would be a good candidate? And what’s defines a bad one?

Could it be someone not technically prepared enough for the job or someone that might not have the behavior expected in that moment?

All the variables define this selection. Not a natural one, but a choise made by requirements, market knowledge, previous experiences and cultural adequacy.
But you see, that doesn’t really disqualifies the individual!

Sometimes what we believe is the “right behavior” in an interview may just be a reflex of our own bias.
Also attitudes of candidates toward personas from different backgrounds, gender, race, age, may give us more answers than an 1 hour conversation.

What is different always scaries us at first and this is a fact! Our minds are programed to absorve in the first hand only what’s confortable and understandable. But it’s our capability of dealing with this feeling of resistence that truly defines who we are.

It does not matter to defend empathy if you do not put yourself in other people shoes and do not comprehend that humans will always prefer to hear “I feel your pain”, rather then “I understand your pain”.

Understandment is a concept that comes from knowledge, it gives significance. But feelings can never be replaced, it’s emotion and it’s genuine.

The hability to see beyond appearences takes a long journey — I’m still travelling — that must start from the inner desire of understanding different contexts. If you try and not be successful, at least the fear to see through other people eyes was overcome and there was learning of a valuable lesson:

Sometimes to bring more clarity into our lives, we must see each others shadows.