There could be clear or innate expectations that you will look for in an employee doesn’t matter whether you are recruiting fresh from the open market or from recommendations. The candidate should have the characteristics that fits your company’s objectives, with the appropriate work ethics apart from the ability to perform the roles and responsibilities of the position.

I had worked in corporate organisations for 20 years and had the opportunities to observe but  also be a part of the decision-making process in recruiting and managing personnel with the employers and business owners.

The one area in recruitment that I still questioned the effectiveness is the practice when employers recruit an individual based on the recommendations from their friends and acquaintances without analyzing the person’s characters first. Ignoring all the red flags which are obscured by the relationship they have with the person who had made the recommendation. It was like watching your parents take in a stranger into the house and let them stay with you. This is similar to when your employer does the same without knowing the candidate’s background, work ethics, or even asking in-depth questions that means an official job interview. And of course, in this case there is no such thing anymore as decision-making using their intuition. Recruiting decisions were solely by “Let us help my friend’s friend”, “Let us find something for him to do eventually we will get him a suitable position”,  “Oh I trust my friend so this person should be good”. At times, these individuals are not even needed by the company and eventually became a redundant resource. And most of the time, the employees do not fit in the company, become a problematic liability and then the employer and teams will end up in a backwards spiral or trying to save the company’s reputation. 

​This case study’s focal point is one of the many similar examples of A liability that could have been avoided in the first place if you learn from your past mistakes and intuition. It is one of those case studies that I hope employers and business owners should read. I had categorized this case in the negative spectrum. This spectrum is a nightmare of an experience for HR managers, executives, directors and employers as it involves employee’s work performance and most importantly work ethic. The employee in this case study used to work with this company for about 5 years before he was terminated due to his unacceptable behavior towards a client and staff, using words that were unpleasant and unprofessional. 

​Profile: Senior Engineer. Hector (not his actual name)
Age: 60+ years old
Worked with the company for about 5 years. Was an employee with the company few years back, but his contract were terminated due to his performance and cheating on his overtime reports. 

The following analysis were my personal observation as a HR Executive during the first year of this engineer’s employment. This was about 15 years ago when my boss who is now my ex-employer decided to recruit Hector as a full-time engineer in the company. When my ex-boss informed me of his decision to recruit Hector just because Hector approached him for help of an employment, I had expressed my disagreement and listed down my reasons.

When I first met him I didn’t know the back story of his previous termination with the company so I had relied on my personal impartial observation and analysis. Everything about my analysis of Hector especially my intuition screamed ‘Nope’ and ‘To be careful’. There were tints of This guy cannot be trusted when I was first introduced to him, and I could feel negative energy when he first entered the meeting room. When my ex-boss left me with him to settle the official employment process, he was totally different from before. He was arrogant and clearly acted in a way telling me who was 30 years younger than him that he is the superior one and has all the authority to influence anyone. And again, the uncomfortable energy that I was sensing during that time was actually more than whatever he had showed himself as. My feedback to my ex-boss about my perspectives were totally ignored. Thinking of it later it was not surprising since my ex-boss will usually recruit either his friends or friends’ friends based on his relationships with them. I let him be, however, at my side I interacted with Hector with a lot of precautions.
 
A few months later, there was this an incident that happened when Hector approached me and questioned about his salary. He questioned in an authoritative tone of voice once again how his salary does not fit with the consultation rates that our company had proposed to our client for a project he was involved in. Meaning, why is he getting a salary for example $4,000 per month when the project deal was closed at $350,000. A question that was unexpected. First and foremost is how can a person who kept bragging to his co-workers and employer that he has years of work experiences could not understand how running a business works. Since Hector has arrogance and egoistic in his character, I replied with “You actually have no rights to questioned how much the company charge the client. You had agreed with the salary he offered to you so whatever the company earned is actually none of your business.” I was expecting him to respond to me with another attack, but he turned timid right after that. I reported this case to my ex-boss immediately just in case the story turns to another telenovela if he heard it directly from Hector. Like I mentioned earlier, I had to take extra precautions when dealing with Hector.
​
In the first few years of when Hector was on employment with us, I did not use my handwriting analysis (graphology) skills to look into Hector’s handwriting because at that time I wanted to challenge myself to learn to also understand people through their body language, tone of their voice, behavior and also learn to test my intuition and analysis. 

During the first few years of Hector’s employment, there were evidence of his eat snake attitude. Eat snake is a phrase we use in Asia mainly Singapore and Malaysia which originates from a Hokkien phrase, Jiak Zhua. This means avoiding responsibilities and slacking off from tasks. Other co-workers who had worked  with him in projects had reported to the boss of his eat snake attitude. Reports were not completed, overseas projects that he was assigned by the boss to be the main person of contact ended up haywire.  Not only that they were victims of him whenever he will twist their words and stories for his advantage. Employees management were so bad at the project site he was in that I had to travel overseas to talk to the team members and him. His communication with our client, his co-workers and the company management were terribly unpleasant and not organised. There was an instance that he tried to embarrass our company in front of a client by complaining loudly in the client’s office main area without thinking about our company’s reputation that I had to hit his leg under the table to tell him to shut it up. And there were two instances that because of him, two well performed good employees left the company and another was terminated.

The employee who decided to leave the company had reported to our company that Hector cheated when reporting machines testing results for the project. Instead of siding to this employee, our ex-boss trusted Hector even though there were clear evidences. In terms of work performance and work ethics, I would rate this employee is at 10 while Hector is at 0.1 with a scale of 10 as most reliable and with good performance.

The other case was a tragic story because this employee who was terminated trusted Hector. This employee who also owns an employment agency company which my ex-boss was well aware of had told Hector that when he will be stationed in China with him, he will be taking the opportunities to also look into the market to expand his business. Yes it was a conflict of interest but also he trusted the wrong person to share his plans. So, Hector notified the boss behind his back. And because of that this employee was terminated immediately. Between Hector and this employee, the work performance is also totally incomparable. Hector will be at 0.1 while this employee is at 9.5 but all those again does not matter to the ex-boss in this case apparently.

In terms of trustworthiness, from the personal relationships’ perspectives between Hector and his co-worker, he was well-known as someone who the co-workers will avoid at any cost. From the side of professionalism which is encompassing responsibilities such as writing reports and completing projects, Hector does not fit to be in the scale of the Trustworthy and Reliable Employee category. However for the sake of this case study, I am placing him at 0.1 even though personally I will put him as 0.0. 

​Let us study his handwriting whether he is actually that person that I had just analysed earlier solely based on my observations of his behavior, characters, mindset and work ethics. 

Hector’s handwriting form is thready. A wavy thread of connections between letters. This kind of handwriting is considered as cursory and is written with speed. There are words that are indecipherable because of the fast movement of the writing such as work or write? for or fr? airside or forside? Rm or Run?

​The positive part of the analysis of someone with a thready handwriting: adaptable in whatever conditions and situations he is in, able to make use of opportunities when he finds fit, diplomacy, with a considerable physical action, and inventive (Cited Nezos R., 2006). 

After understanding an employee through your observations and analysing their personality through their handwriting, what is that one step further that you need to do to solve any issues that could arise? If your employee has the filiform, thready handwriting and they do not use it in a way that will impact your company’s business and your other employees, then leave them be.

However, if you have noticed those traits dominating your employee and negatively impacting your employees who are with good work ethics, good performance and behaviour leaving your company because of this one person’s behaviour, you have to open your eyes and mind to decide logically. For this case study, Hector’s boss was blinded by Hector’s assumed loyalty and let himself be manipulated for 5 years and not forgetting the previous 3 years. When you are running your business, be open to listen to your other employees who would have been giving you feedback about this person over the years. Personal relationships should be set aside when you are managing your business because you will lose the employees who genuinely would like to work hand-in-hand with you to build your company and also for their personal growth.
 
Learn to be self-aware, self-conscious when you observe your employees and make any decisions. Ask yourself the basis of your decision to justify why you are deciding to trust A but not B. Because in a span of as short as one year, your decision to let the good employee go and give someone like Hector to breed in your company, you will not only lose that one good employee, but you are also actually piling doubts in the other employees’ minds because of your favouritism, indecisions, and biasness. And you will keep repeating this same process for years and years, adamant and ended up being stagnant in your personal growth. Eventually 8 years later, the ones who will be left behind with you in your company are all the Hectors. 

​Author: S.Sulianah (Graphologist and Founder of Grapholistic International)
Your Handwritings and Characters Analyst
www.grapholistic.com

If you are wondering, why am I including fickle-mindedness in the list of traits that could hinder your self-esteem and development, and how could it possibly influence your self-esteem?

Apart from the self-criticism trait that was highlighted in the earlier episode, the fickle-minded trait will make you questioned yourself and continuously changing your decisions.

It shows how you are not confident with your perspectives, opinions and even your own analysis. It tells you and of course the other people that you are working with or living with, that you have no idea why you had even made that decisions in the first place.

Furthermore, this trait will not only lower the perception you have towards yourself and diminish the confidence to make decision on your own, it will also affect your relationship with others.

When you constantly decide in an erratic way, it will be unpleasant and irritating to those people who are affected by your indecision. Gradually, you will create distrusts. Those people who you are dealing with will questioned not only your leadership, most importantly your credibility and reliability.

To begin with, being inconsistent and unsure when making decisions can happen when you have no idea what is going on. Or even if you do, you may not be sure about that subject or could be that you do not have any experiences dealing in that kind of situations. 

Because you were not sure, you might be  worried that “What if your decision could affect the entire team in a wrong way, or even tear apart the whole plan?”

Well, those worries are valid. Like for instance, your team is trying to save someone from drowning. The first step probably is to dive straight to the lake which you had instructed. But then suddenly someone saw an alligator. In this case, clearly you need to change the decision by probably getting a boat or rope instead of diving straight ahead to help. Changing decision like in this case is understandable. 

The kind of fickle decisions which could make you doubt yourself, or people to doubt your reliability is when you keep changing your 'final decisions' solely relying on others’ opinions.

For instance, you have decided with your team to fix those ceiling lights in your office. As usual, you had instructed your staff to source for suppliers and purchase those lights. Once you received the delivered items 2 weeks later, out of nowhere one of your friends who came to visit you in the office suggested you change the lights to bulb instead of LED. You decided to listen to your friend’s opinion even though you had spent hours deciding with your staff that LED is less costly for your office monthly electricity expenses.

You listened to a friend who was not involved in the decision-making and has no idea what is going on. The point is you rely on external inputs, wasting time and money. You did not even stop to think about it yourself. From your position you might not realized that your behavior is evident to your staff clearly showing how you are not confident with your own decisions and could easily be influenced. It is worst if this is not your first time. 

Because of the way he make decisions, employees do not trust him. They may look like they listened but in fact once they get out of the meeting, they let it go. It was not a surprise when employees could not handle it anymore that they decided to leave. Being fickle in small decisions for your personal one person situations may not affect anyone but if you are working in an organization, doesn’t matter whether you lead a team or not, the way you think, respond and when taking actions will impact you and other groups of people in a larger scale.

1. First and foremost, change it by being aware of your behavior and understand the way you think. You must first observe and analyze the way you respond to the surrounding and in different situations. How you will usually think, behave and respond in circumstances like when you have more time to decide, and in urgency.
   
   
2. Then, learn to focus on the problem solving instead of relying on what if you don’t listen to them, and you might lose them as your friend if you don’t consider their opinions. Build your own backbone.
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3. If you have a boss or employee or even your partner who you think might have this character in them, you can check their handwriting slants.
   

1. In handwriting analysis, one of the handwriting traits that signifies inconsistent thinking like being fickle, you can observe that the handwriting will have variation in slants. Slants are the direction your letters are leaning to. Either left, right or upright. If the individual has inconstant decisions, their handwriting slants will be a mixture of two. The intensity will depend on the overall degree of slants and variations. 
   
   Also be careful if the person has three of this at one time in their handwriting. The person could be manipulative too. ​With reference to the previous example of an employer who I used to work with, he has two of slants mixed between left and upright most of the time. And sometimes the slants will be upright and towards the right. Yes, this could also signify someone who is flexible and in fact he was.
   
   However, if you have these traits you have to learn how and when to use it at the right place and at the right time. Because if not, the personality can turn to be an unpleasant behaviour not only to others but to your own disposition.
   
   
2. Other than that, you can also observe other traits that could possibly exists on the handwriting that signifies indecision. The variation in the size of the handwriting that is the height and or width or both of the middle zone. If it fluctuates intensively, it signifies that how he is not sure of himself. He might be okay now but, in a few minutes, he will not be.  
   
   For instance, you might notice that your employer will be so into not getting involved with the same client who has not been paying the project’s fees on-time to your company. Because of that your boss insisted he will not get involved with any new projects with them anymore. He will spend four hours talking to you about the client and how he will refuse their new project offer next time until they pay the outstanding. Then, two days later, your boss came to your room and tell you with excitement and pride that he just signed off a new agreement for a new project with the same client. Well, if this is how unpredictable your boss is, high possibility his handwriting sizes varies extremely. 
   
   
3. Another handwriting trait that will present in the person’s handwriting is low self-esteem. I had covered in earlier episode how to identify self-esteem on the handwriting. One of the low self-esteem trait is the placement of the t-bar which is below on the middle. T-bar is the horizontal line of your letter-t. If the person writes with a low t-bar, he is likely to be insecure about himself.
   
   High chances is he will doubt any of his decisions and tend to rely on others’ opinions. So, he will end up listening to someone else’s opinions instead of his especially if he has the desire to get approval from them mostly someone who sounds more authoritative.
   

1. As for variation in slants, learn to be conscious of how you write and the direction the slants is leaning to. If you tend to write upright, focus on upright. If right or left, do the same. Mixing slants slightly is okay but if too much, it will be too extreme and will definitely affect your behavior and the way you think. Be self-aware with the way you write.
2. This applies the same to the size of your handwriting. Be consistent. Not rigid just be consistent on your handwriting size.
3. As for your t-bar, write it above the middle zone. That is enough. The method of changing the handwriting is called Graphotherapy. It will take some time to noticed changes in your personality but definitely with the correct technique you will see the difference.

​To re-post these contents on your website, social media, blogs, articles, YouTube etc, please remember to cite the Author's name, S.Sulianah, and link to her company's website www.grapholistic.com