Q: Why do you think that managers hire unqualified people? Example – you have 3 candidates for the same job; one who is older and very qualified, one who is qualified, and one with no experience and knows nothing about the job. But the one who is unexperienced and knows nothing about the job gets the job. Why?
A: It depends on the situation.
Salary demands could be at play here; perhaps the two candidates who are qualified priced themselves out of the running.
Another way to look at it could be that the employer wants to bring in someone with a fresh perspective that can be trained the way the company wants them to be trained, rather than someone with experience who may or not be set in their ways.
Many successful companies will bring in people from other industries rather than from other firms in the same industry because they want people who aren’t already of the mindset of another company in the same field. Southwest wouldn’t hire people who worked for other airlines for just this reason; you don’t always want to bring someone’s preconceived notions of how things are done in another company.