Stephen Balkam
Founder and CEO, Family Online Safety Institute
How I Hire: My First Hire Was A Freedom Fighter
It was the summer of 1980 and I was the 25-year-old manager of a community arts center called InterAction, in Kentish Town, north London. As my job title would suggest, I was in charge of running the building from maintenance and cleaning to security as well as hiring out our multi-purpose hall, the two recording studios and a couple of log cabins outside the building.
As well as overseeing the receptionist, I also supervised our night security guard, who had recently left for another position. So, late one August afternoon, I was sitting opposite a tall, proud, Eritrean refugee, not much older than me, who had responded to our ad at the local job center.
Abraham explained that he had recently arrived in the UK having been granted asylum after a year-long ordeal that began with his fleeing Ethiopia in the middle of the Eritrean War of Independence. He had stowed away on a ship and when the crew discovered him, he was nearly shot on the spot, but was able to address the Italian captain in his native tongue. The captain relented and spared him his life. (Eritrea had been a colony of Italy.) For twelve months Abraham circumnavigated the globe looking for a country that would let him disembark. The UK allowed him in and now here he was in front of me.
Having explained the duties of the position, the interview took a rather strange turn when I asked what he had been doing prior to his departure from his country. “I was a freedom fighter,” he said. This was not what I was expecting and I wasn’t quite sure what the follow-up question should be. He had become radicalized, he told me, when the Ethiopian air force started bombing his village. He had been trained in hand-to-hand combat and guerilla tactics by the Eritrean liberation army.
So it occurred to me to ask him if he had ever killed a man. “Yes,” came the rather matter-of-fact response. Again, I was not sure where to go with that answer, so I simply asked, “How?” He then proceeded to describe a night ambush in which he and his compatriots surprised an Ethiopian patrol nearing a neighboring village and the methods they used to quietly, but efficiently, terminate the threat.
It took me a while to compose myself and move on with the rest of the interview. No, he didn’t have any references or anything that could be described as a resume. The British Refugee Council liaison officer did speak highly of Abraham’s character and the hope that as a cutting-edge, non-profit organization working in a challenging area of the city, we might give him a chance to prove himself.
I took a deep breath and hired him. He worked seven nights a week from 9pm to 9am. I offered him nights off, but he preferred to work right through. Abraham was required to make nightly journal entries so I could see what issues had arisen in the night.
Kentish Town in the early ‘80s was full of opportunists and petty thieves who would circle the building at night, looking in through the large windows and trying the doors to find a way in. The building itself was full of expensive electronic equipment, never mind a fully stocked bar. Abraham would often note that “the enemy” was attempting to break in, but he always managed to frighten them away. He was rather dismissive of “enemy’s” tactics and thought the local kids particularly lacking in discipline and fortitude.
Abraham stayed with us for over a year until he eventually found a job where he could work during the day and go to school at night. As my first hire, he was a huge success and the experience gave me the confidence to go on to hire other security, maintenance and reception staff at InterAction and the many great people I have worked with since.
Over thirty years later, I can safely say that I have not hired another freedom fighter – at least that I am aware of. Nor have I asked the kind of questions I asked Abraham that afternoon. Hiring him, however, opened my eyes to the remarkable stories that some people have and the need to remain open-minded and willing to take a (calculated) risk in taking on the least obvious candidate.
Photo: Eritrean children, thecomeupshow/Flickr under Creative Commons license
http://www.linkedin.com/influencers/20130924100211-15208484-how-i-hire-my-first-hire-was-a-freedom-fighter
Received on Tue Sep 24 2013 - 11:24:09 EDT