News
September 25, 2020
Avoiding the Most Common Hiring Mistakes
While we know that recruiting has changed overnight, it seems like the same old hiring errors are continuing to happen. According to business.com, the Department of Labor estimates that the cost of a bad hire can equate to 30% of an employee’s potential first-year earnings. In a time where everybody is looking into cost-saving initiatives, making a hiring mistake can be detrimental to a company. In the below guidelines, we’ll go over some common faults and what managers and HR teams can do to counteract them.
Don’t feel pressured to fill openings quickly.
As simple as this sounds, this is one of the most common mistakes made by HR and managers alike. Hiring out of desperation just to fill a spot is a waste of time and money, and can set off a domino effect of negativity around the office. A team of employees depend on one another, and if just one person is off their game, it can affect how your entire company does business. Taking the time to hire is the number one priority, and having an open position may even have better results (such as others in the team stepping up to the plate) than filling it with the wrong individual.
Skill can be taught, but attitude cannot.
Hiring someone with the whole package is obviously ideal, but don’t be so set on who has the most years of experience. Take into consideration that candidates can and will be trained in the workplace. Even if you are stepping out of your comfort zone, sometimes trusting your gut and taking a risk on a candidate can have the greatest payoff.
Consider the whole picture rather than a single snapshot.
If you Google tips and tricks on how to give a great interview, thousands of pages will populate with methods to impress HR and managers alike. Candidates are skilled in answering questions the way that they should nowadays, rather than giving honest responses. Oftentimes, applicants may even overembellish their resume and provide skills they do not possess, which can be combatted by verifying such items through background screening.
Screen your candidates.
Jumping off the last guideline to avoid bad hiring, screening applicants can assist you from the start in identifying the very best candidates. In a world where your team has access to some of the most advanced screening technologies available, why not take advantage of them? From social media screening to in-depth personality assessments, it’s important to find out more about a candidate far beyond what meets the eye. While it may be more costly to begin with, the extra research leads to a more informed hiring decision, with often a lack of turnover.
Rethink your job description.
Too general of a job description, and your recruiters will have to spend valuable time weeding out applicants who do not fit the qualifications of the open position or were misled by certain key words. Too specific of a job description, and you may already be eliminating your very best candidates. Finding a happy medium may take fine tuning, but it is crucial to recruiting and hiring.
By taking the time and patience to employ the right candidates, HR teams can not only increase the likelihood of hiring success, but expand their recruiting skills. With more and more people applying to find jobs as our world returns back to a sense of normalcy, it’s important to find the best candidates for your company. For more information, read more about how to combat falling into passive recruitment on HR.com’s article here.