The weird ways of managing people

As a German ex-patriate I have been thrown into the middle of South African nowhereness with little or no understanding of the cultural traditions and customs and no basic understanding of the language.

I am trying to deal with this by taking language classes, bending my tongue in ways it has never been bent before and by asking local people more questions than they could possibly stand about customs and traditions. Many of the things I am being told I file away in my brain ready to use the next time the same situation arises only to find out that in fact, the situation is not even similar and what I thought was the custom suddenly is not. 

My team have been incredibly helpful in these situations as they are all local, hard working and trying to please me, their boss (does the boss always have the least knowledge about what's actually going on?). 

Anyway, to complete my team I was recruiting two new members of staff last week and asked everyone in the team to recommend people who they thought capable of doing the job.

One person that worked for us in a consulting role but really works for Wits University recommended her 18 year old daughter who had just had a baby. To me, this was a) nepotism and b) an unsuitable choice due to age but I asked her in for an interview in any case with six other people just because I know few jobs are available in the community. The interviews (more on this in a later post) went horrendous. Six hours of total pain caused partially by very superficial knowledge of English or responses to questions which never quite answered these. 

As it turned out, the daughter was absolutely unsuitable and I therefore decided not to hire her. After I had made the decision, the director of the department of Wits that is collaborating with us rang me up to say he heard that we were supporting nepotism. I explained that we were in fact not and he was pleased. The following conversation established, however, that the person consulting for us, the mother of the 18 year old had started as a volunteer on our project and is full time employed by Wits who have a contract clause which requires people to seek approval from their managers should they plan additional employment. We had been paying this woman for over a year as a consultant under the table not knowing that we were actually risking our co-operation with Wits in the process and her livelihood.

To cut a long story short, the woman was more than displeased that we "picked the wrong candidate for the job" the next morning and shouted at me for doing so. In addition I had to tell her that under no circumstances would I employ her further unless she cleared this with her manager as she could lose her job if this was discovered. Naturally, she refused and is therefore no longer working with us.

This happened two weeks ago and she has yet to speak a word with  me.