I have more than 3 years experience of management also I have worked with more than 150 persons in my working experience. I also faces some human problems and I have did some mistakes while working with human, I have many problems of project cause by human and I must make performance appraisal for 3 members. In addition I have interviewed more than 60 members for my companies and I only recruit nearly 10 employees. It is my background experience to say that 'People is not the most valuable asset of organization'. I have read many books, articles about articles and when I am a developer also the fresh manager I always believe this statement as bible. But having more experience I think it is totally wrong and I were illusional before. Let's hear the statement that I think better 'The right people is the most valuable asset of organization'. If the organization always hire the right members, so I agree that people is the most valuable asset of organization but unfortunately many organizations can not have the right recruitment process.

Most organizations have the fail recruitment process, it is depended on the recruiter. The common process is applied for many organizations: if my project needs resources urgently, I will escalate to the upper management level, after that the HR will select some candidates for interview. The interview rounds may be 2-3 times, one for technical and one for dealing salary. It is not enough and standard. Why? because one interviewee can be passed for interview for this project but not other projects. That means the organization has not the standard level of employee knowledge but only depends on project and it leads the dependency to the interviewer. If the interviewer has not good skill of interview, he can choose the wrong person to team. That wrong person can impact to the project's success also cause many problems for company.

If you find you choose the wrong person, what would you do? Fire him/her if he can not be improved? It is not easy to fire someone because the company must pay money for this fire, it also impacts to the moral of team also if you are a good man you will think your employee life, his family after he is fired. If you leave him in the team, other members will help them in works and team's productivity also team's morale are decreased. Your team has 10 members but productivity is only 7, it is the big problem with client! All members know that A is a low-productivity and bad guy and they will do works for him, he always be assigned the easiest tasks but his salary is high. You do not have any reason to reduce the salary because low performance, moreover this guy has many close friends in team and he can say un-truth thing can impact the team's morale. You try to leave him until the project end and after that you have the reason to kick him to another project and your colleagues will face the same problem. It is clear that recruit the wrong people can cause harmful for organization especially when they are recruited to higher position. More important that you can promote that wrong person and that can cause your talent resources move out your company and the organization contains all so so members.

One of the big mistake of recruitment is not considering whether the interviewee suitable with company's culture. The right people is not only the guy satisfy the job's requirement of project and company's standard level but he is suitable with company's culture and team's culture. If you do not enclose culture criteria in your selection, that leads your team, your company has no culture! but in modern era, all know that the culture is very important for one organization!

I am sure that all readers are agreed with my above points and you think that it is obvious but I see such problem is occurred regularly and it is explained by business needs. In out-source software industry, most of company can not control well the development, if you have more contract you will hire more employees. The client says that (or you estimate) they need more than 50 members for new project within 2 months, you will try to hire 50 members. Due to the strict timeline, the interviewer has no interview skill you will try to get all if you can and many junior members attend to your team. If the project fail, you will blame your team because they lack of experience. In fact, I think the blame is totally wrong because you have selected the resources and you are totally responsible for your selection. My basic criteria of selecting members are:

1. The candidate must meet the job's requirement of company not project. That I defines the standard for myself if company does not.
2. The candidate must be a good man, who I can trust and make friends: if company does not define the culture, you must define the culture for your team that only all good mans, be professional, client first and aim to quality.

Read my post http://www.haiphucnguyen.net/blog/?p=3, many members think I am a strict guy. May be it is correct but selecting the right people for your team is very important for me to build a good team spirit and the project will go smoothly because the people factor in the most important in software industry. If I have all right people, they are the most valuable asset in team, company if they are not I do not consider they are the valuable asset. Because fire or move the wrong people usually takes high cost, hire the right people is a must for any organization specially for high technology industry as software development.