When there’s a staff position that needs filling, you want to find someone who has a certain spark, something that makes them a great fit for the company culture. But you also want someone who’s exceptionally skilled — which might make you tempted to put out a call for a wizard. A communications wizard, a PHP wizard, an office wizard — you name it, there’s a brand of magic practitioners out there doing the job. But is a wizened old man really the best member of your team?
4 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Hire a Wizard
1. Wizards generally don’t specialize in office-appropriate jobs
Sure, a wizard would be ideal if you needed someone to fill the empty necromancer spot in your org chart – but the likelihood that your company needs a Dark Arts practitioner is probably pretty slim. Unfortunately, wizards tend to have specialities in more esoteric subjects than analytics or design, and nothing makes the lunchroom less hospitable than potions brewing next to the Keurig. If you hire a wizard, make sure that you’re looking for someone to specialize in magic, rather than any computing language, because you’re more likely to get an expert in runes and scrying than Python.
2. Prophecies
Wizards tend to come with a lot of baggage — there’s always another quest to go on, or another prophecy to fulfill, or another orphan child to make into the new king of the land. This makes them very unreliable for long term project management, as they’ll often need to pop off and defeat an evil warlord or mage, and you’ll look bad because you’re not considering that the fate of the world may rest on their shoulders.
3. Cloaks are not a good look at client meetings
There’s a difference between having a relaxed office dress code and having employees show up harboring small woodland creatures in their cloaks, beards, and hats. While well-coiffed facial hair is quite in these days, a beard down to one’s knees might not send the message your company is hoping to. Plus, if you let one employee carry around a Staff of Dark Celestial Power, all of them will want one, and that seems ripe for an OSHA violation.
4. Potential for evil
Wizards seems like great guys, most of the time, when they can stay away from powerfully corrupting objects or nasty ideas about blood purity. But when you hire a wizard, you have to accept that your new employee is at risk of turning evil if a ring of power shows up in the office. Wizards often mean well, but when they’re not blocking the hallways, yelling “You shall not pass!” they’re being tempted by darker forces than have ever been witnessed in Man’s Age. This might work for your favor if you don’t mind waging a magical war that continues beyond time, but it really puts you in a bind if your wizard is working on a tight deadline.
In short, there are plenty of reasons why you should avoid looking specifically for wizards — chances are you’ll end up with a lot of owl feathers and leather bound spellbooks rather than the Agile expert you were hoping for.
