Wellness & Fitness

Should I fail these nail-biting job interviewees?

Interview

A job interview: Some interviewees normally experience anxiety. file

I was recently promoted to the position of manager at my workplace. My new role has already seen me sit on several recruitment panels for new employees. In the short time I have witnessed a queer habit of nail biting among some candidates.

Some colleagues say nail-biting is a sign of weakness in individuals while some say it is an irrelevant habit that may be linked to one’s genes. Please help me understand what causes this habit and whether we should consider it as an indicator when deciding a candidate’s job capabilities.

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Congratulations on becoming a manager. You have started well by first, being a keen observer, and second, asking for an explanation of a new phenomenon that has come your way by virtue of occupation of your new office.

Far too many people pretend to know all as soon as they are promoted, that way making many serious mistakes in their work.

Though you have now become a manager, in the process you have become the most junior manager. In that position, you are like the new boy/girl on the first day in high school. From the most senior in primary school, he becomes a junior once again upon entry to high school.

This process is repeated many times in life, at university, on getting married, or becoming a parent or even a grandparent. Each time you rise up a notch, you start off as the most junior member of that class and must allow yourself to learn from those who were there before you.

Your question indicates your willingness to learn. You have the potential of becoming a good manager as long as you keep consulting your seniors. In life, and at every stage, there will be those with more experience than you – seek to drink from their fountain of knowledge with humility.

Your question is much more complex than you might have thought because there are different types of nail biting, many of which are signs of anxiety. Some others are not and are indicative of more serious mental conditions.

Just to start off at the extreme end of the spectrum, we saw a few weeks ago a young man who clearly suffered from a severe mental illness (schizophrenia) and who was also chewing (as opposed to biting) his nails.

In that delusional state, the young man believed that beneath his nails were hidden some transmitters that were sending obscene messages that were disturbing members of his family and the neighbours. He had chewed his nails to the point of bleeding.

Following treatment for schizophrenia, the young man’s condition improved and he stopped the habit.

The cases you see at interviews are unlikely to exist at this extreme end. They are more likely a reflection of anxiety and have probably no clinical significance in the sense that the nail biting goes away as soon as the tension of the interviewer is dealt with. Thus as an interviewer try and get candidates to relax during interviews and you might notice a decline in the frequency of nail biting.

There are some interview panels that treat job applicants like criminals who must be embarrassed, downtrodden, ridiculed and demeaned – all for the enjoyment of the panel.

Ask yourself if your team is treating the candidates with respect and allowing them to feel dignified in your presence. If not, you are guilty of increasing tension and nail biting.
Remember you are the junior interviewer and you have a great deal to learn yet.

Nail biting during an interview is a sign of tension, which could be due to the candidate’s anxiety to get the job, or it could be due to the inexperience of the panel, which might be torturing rather than interviewing.

There is another class of people who bite their nails and for whom a different approach is appropriate. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM 5) is the gold standard in the classification of mental disorders.

In the chapter on obsessive-compulsive and related disorders, we find conditions that are closely related to nail biting. Trichotillomania (hair-pulling disorder) and excoriation (skin picking) are close relatives of nail biting disorders.

In the same chapter, we find descriptions of people with a hoarding disorder, while others are preoccupied with the shape and size of various parts of their bodies.

By including these conditions in this chapter, the psychiatric community is stating that these behaviours, in some people, amount to treatable mental disorders in the category of obsessive compulsive disorders. Hair pulling, skin picking and nail biting can be a sign of a mental disorder.

What, therefore, starts off in your question as a simple matter of nail biting can turn out to be a major mental illness demanding treatment, or as is most likely in your case, an innocent case of nail biting caused by an inexperienced panel of interviewers.