Nepotism for Dummies

Germans have a nepotism problem. In the southern state of Bavaria, about 79 (out of around 200 total) members of the state parliament and government, including six cabinet secretaries, have employed close relatives in their state offices. Paid for by tax money.

In the federal government, the development secretary Mr. Niebel is reported to have hired 40 members of his own party into cushy ministry jobs.

The Bavarians have done a sort of mea culpa and promised improvements. Mr. Niebel, on the other hand, went on the offensive saying the allegations are untrue. We cannot ask if someone is a member of any party, we only select for skills and experience, says the valiant public official.

We think this is outrageous! And depressing!

They lack the skills to do even nepotism right, how can they govern successfully?

Here is a brief guide "Nepotism for Dummies".

This guide assumes that you are familiar with the basic workarounds of recruiting, for instance, how to exclude female applicants or older applicants.

1) The Wife Swap
Named after a TV show and a hedonistic way of doing things, this is a fundamental principle of nepotism in any organization other than the smallest.
Instead of employing your wife or another close relative yourself, you find a colleague in the org who wants to provide for one of his or her dearest, and you swap. You get the satisfaction of screwing the taxpayer and possibly your wife during office hours.

This fundamental approach works great for almost all levels of skills and experience, but it works best for low level to mid level positions that typically are under less scrutiny by the union reps or any internal affairs style folks.

2) The Job Description
A job description well done means all the difference. We are pretty sure that this is the level of buddy-ness at which the likes of Mr. Niebel operate. Any plum job has many eyes on it, so prepare, prepare, prepare. 

The sequence of activities is critical. Only the incompetent recruiter will write a job description and then try to fit the perfect buddy into it.

There are two general situations around filling a plum job: the job is open to internal candidates only or to the public. We provide a guide for jobs open to public applicants because the "internal only" jobs represent just an easier subset, with a built-in tilt towards nepotism.  

Fucking with the merit system is fun, and works like this:
First, find the person who will get the job, only then write the job description. If you know of undesirable candidates, gather information about them, maybe even talk to them. This way, you can tailor the job description a lot better and you can later claim transparency of the process (hey, I talked to many candidates).
Depending on the country you live in, things may be easier or more difficult. In the U.S. for instance, some pesky laws need to be observed but you can basically ignore foreigners. U.S. trees need to be tended to by U.S. citizens. In Europe, EU foreigners cannot be ignored but gently excluded.

Second, build as many safeguards into the job description as you can. Use the resume of your buddy as a template for the job description. For example, don't say "lawyer with 10 years of experience". Specifically ask for a lawyer with the specialized field your "final candidate" has, make sure the description reflects his or her career.
Draw on any non-skill differentiators. For example, your friend has a security clearance and a troublemaker competitor has not -- easy. Or, say, Mr. Troublemaker won't be able to start the job as early as your buddy.  Or, your buddy has worked in a foreign country, Mr. T. has not.

Be creative.

If there are union reps in your org, run the draft by them. This is sometimes overlooked by the bigger ego politicians but it is invaluable. Union reps are people, too, they want to feel valued, and they might point out the odd issue your HR person has missed.

Third, list the job opening. Make sure to comply with the regulations about informing any current employees. If you are not required to send out a note to your department, do not do it. Many careers everywhere are made and destroyed through simple withholding of this information. Now wait for the applications to roll in.

3) The Interview
On the procedural side, make sure to interview everybody who made the shortlist. The most stupid mistake that is still made is to just interview the top two or three choices. If the shortlist requires five, interview five.

Conduct the interviews as if every candidate had a fair shot at the job. Meticulous conduct of the interviews always pays off. It is important to always keep in mind that some of the candidates may know it is a charade and still go along with it.
Their motives for playing along are not important but you must do everything you can to maintain the appearance.
If you trip up, the internal disillusion of a candidate (I'll try, knowing full well they have picked the other guy already) may boil over and cause problems.

4) Welcome the new employee
Congratulations, you now master the principles of nepotism. If you followed the guidelines to the T, you can relax and tell the media to fuck off even if they can show that all the recent plum job recruits in your department are members of your party and every single one of them has known you earlier in their career.


One more thing:
We suspect that Mr. Niebel's media problem originated either in the union rep. part of step 2 or in the interviews in step 3.