Recruitment at Hogwarts

Recruitment at Hogwarts

Blog by Kathryn Stewart

Dumbledore is an excellent example of leaving recruiting to the experts while you get on doing what you do best - his staffing placements for Hogwarts were terrible! Now I’m aware that Harry Potter isn’t real, and that he was employing wizard teachers (not a category on job boards as a rule), however there can be a lot of parallels to workplaces that we have all known, loved and loathed.

Let’s look at the Defence Against the Dark Arts position which was essentially a one year contract due to a curse that Dumbledore may or may have not informed the applicants of:

Year 1: Quirrell:

Who? Dithery, unassuming – he’s that worker that somehow fluked the job interview and got into a job beyond him and everyone knew it. But wait, he’s possessed and doesn’t complete his year’s contract because he gets himself killed. Imagine the Health and Safety & HR issues around this. I’m not even going to touch the turban, necessary to the plot but loaded with connotation.

Year 2: Lockhart

Vain, attention seeking waste of space who plagiarised other wizards’ deeds and ended up losing his memory trying to attack children. We’ve all worked with one of these. The children learnt very little this year.

Year 3: Lupin

Finally, a great teacher, despite the angst and hidden medical issues. Well liked, however was sick every month due to being a werewolf. If only Dumbledore had conducted better references and discovered attendance was an issue for this candidate. A pre-employment medical wouldn’t have gone amiss either.

Year 4: Moody/Crouch

Good points here for diversity Dumbledore, employing a disabled employee. Shame he never actually taught the children because he was locked in a trunk and was replaced by an emotionally disturbed man who was, wait for it, trying to kill the children. One actually died so where was Worksafe?

Year 5: Umbridge:

She’s the Susan/Karen of all the meme jokes wrapped in a deliciously evil package. To be fair I don’t think Dumbledore had a choice to employ her but she covers all the older lady stereotype types we’ve all worked with. Umbridge unified the rest of staff and students against her in general loathing, so silver linings and all that.

Year 6: Snape

So much to say, so little time. He’s that employee – the grumpy, bored long term staffer who hates his job, people and life generally. Snape wanted the job for a long time and was passed over continually. Finally he gets the role and then kills Dumbledore. Watch out for those grumpy ones!

Other hires of note were Trelawney (pity hire of the insane lady), Hagrid (Dumbledore employed his mate who proceeded to put the children into danger regularly) and Slughorn (who collected favourite kids and ran social events for them – how creepy is that). This is not a healthy workplace let alone school with these characters running amok.

Now I obviously love Harry Potter despite my disparaging comments and this blog came about due to reading to my son about Lockhart and thinking ‘why on earth did Dumbledore hire him’? But let’s face it, as magnificent as Dumbledore was, he didn’t know how to recruit staff and should have outsourced the vacancy to a recruiter who knew what they were doing. Molly perhaps? She would have been awesome.