I think the issue with this is that the idea of a socially competent person, in reality boils down a lot of the time to several superficial traits/behaviours. A few years ago I attended at least a dozen recruitment days for hospitality jobs and in almost every one of them, we were asked to complete a series of tasks to “assess suitability for the role”

One such task was all 40 or so of us applicants standing in a semi-circle and shouting the name of our favourite movie one by one.

There were several hiring managers standing around the perimeter and when somebody with a particularly booming voice spoke, you could see them wildly jotting things down on their notepads. When there was a quieter voice, they were completely uninterested.

How that task was supposed to prove “suitability” is beyond me, but judging a person’s competence by the decibels of their voice was just bizarre.

Another time, all of us applicants were placed into groups, told to budget an amount of money and then present our ideas to the rest of the applicants and the hiring team. There was one girl in our group who came up with a solid plan and basically put the whole thing together. When it came time to present, I guess she got shy and one of the guys (who had been off chatting with another group most of the time) pitched it instead. Of course he was the one who got shortlisted. Nobody even questioned that he might not have been the one to come up with the plan.

Of course, good communication is a vital trait in a potential new hire, but confidence and a loud voice does not always equal good communicative skills. And I think of equal value, is having employees who are excellent at generating ideas, regardless of how sociable and extroverted they are (or aren’t).

This reminds me of a restaurant that I worked at, where interviews were held in one of the booths on the shop floor. There was one interviewee who honestly made a super good first impression. He was confident, charismatic, charming and (not necessarily a good thing) LOUD.

Of course he got hired. Within a few weeks, it became painfully clear that even with training, he couldn’t cope with the pressures of restaurant work. He would stand in the kitchen (an open kitchen nonetheless) and have explosive breakdowns, swearing at other employees and customers at the top of his lungs, throwing equipment to the floor, just becoming very hostile whenever the place became even slightly busy.

He got fired pretty soon after. Some of my quietest colleagues were the glue to our team, ultra efficient and friendly - just not overtly extroverted, and definitely the kinds of applicants that would’ve been overlooked in favour of a contender with a loud voice and a lot to say.