5 Hiring Mistakes Managers Make Too Often

Improve Your Staffing Process by Avoiding these 5 Hiring Mistakes Managers Make Too Often

Finding and keeping great employees is tough. If your company has experienced a costly hiring mistake, you will know exactly what I am talking about. Hiring the wrong person can cost your company a lot – lost productivity, production delays, damage to customer relations, impact on staff morale, costs and time to re-hire, and termination payments are just some of the potential costs.

Below are 5 hiring mistakes that managers make too often. These actions will negatively impact the hiring process and may cause you more headaches as you try to explain to senior management why the new hire did not work out. Avoid these hiring mistakes:

1. Slow Hiring Process: Many managers miss out on hiring great candidates because the hiring process takes too long! Competition for good employees is a reality. Take a close look at your hiring process and figure out the average time from application to job offer.  On average how many weeks does it take to hire someone new at your company? If it is an unreasonably long process, find out where the delays are happening? Are good candidates moving on because they receive no feedback or feedback occurs too late? What can you do to avoid delays and speed up decision making? Delays can’t always be avoided, so how can you keep a good candidate engaged? Communication is essential. If you can provide candidates with a simple explanation, you have a good chance of keeping their interest.    
2. Outdated Job Descriptions: Lack of planning and the reliance on outdated job descriptions is a frequent hiring mistake. Basically, this mistake boils down to managers who don’t know who or what they are looking for. In the rush to get the job advertised and get a person on board, managers are not taking the time to really think about the problem, the skills needed and the right fit. Jobs change and evolve over time and in many cases you don’t need to hire someone exactly like the last person who held the job. Managers don’t take the time to clearly describe the job responsibilities or they make the mistake of delivering a laundry list of job requirements, without identifying the essential skills, knowledge and personality needed. What happens next is managers are presented with candidates who might be a perfect fit for an old job description from 2015, but can’t deliver on solving problems and issues today.
3. Focus on Talent Needed – Forget to “sell” the Company and Role: Recruitment has transitioned into a marketing function. Companies that are able to attract top talent have carefully developed their company brand and are marketing to candidates in many different ways. Too many managers focus solely on what they want and forget to “sell” the company and the role. Hiring someone new is a partnership. You are looking for a certain person with the skills, knowledge, experience and personal fit. But you are also offering more than just a job, you are offering a culture, atmosphere, training, future development opportunities and more. The recruitment process should involve some effort to present the company and role to prospective candidates – in the job ad, during telephone screening, at the interview stage and at the time of offer. Candidates are becoming more accustomed to being “wooed” by prospective employers. If you miss the opportunity to present the benefits of working for your company you could lose a potentially great candidate.  Even worse is failing to present a realistic preview of what it is like to work in your company, and hiring someone who is not the right fit.
4. Too many Steps: Hoops, Gates, Bars, and other Roadblocks to Pass. Does this describe a typical hiring process at your company? If you set up too many steps in your process you will lose great candidates. Too many steps usually means a slow process which is Hiring Mistake #1.  Candidates that are asked to complete too many steps, especially if they are not relevant to the role, will likely move on to more promising job opportunities. These candidates may move on before you even have a chance to interview them. Companies set up steps in their hiring process for valid business reasons. Unfortunately, they often make the mistake of asking all job candidates go thru all steps, even when it is not necessary for the role. Design evaluation tools that meet the needs of the individual job. Get feedback from recent candidates and hires about your process and try to eliminate unnecessary steps to speed up your process.
5. Unstructured Interview: You need a structured interview process. What happens when you just wing it? Usually you end up talking too much and not learning enough about the candidates. Interviews have been proven to be very poor predictors of hiring success. But since they are still so widely used and relied upon, you can at least improve the outcomes by having a structure to follow. Without a structure you might end up hiring the person who is most like you or who makes the best first impression. What is a structured interview? 
   • Identify the essential requirements of the job – skills, knowledge, experience, personality, and cultural fit.
   • Draft interview questions that will give you information about the essential job requirements.
   • You likely have a list of “nice to have skills” too. Draft questions about these points as well, but remember when making your decision to put more weight on the “essential requirements”.
   • Read the candidates resume and draft some specific questions about their skills sets and experience.
   • Take time to really listen – pause before you ask the next question and often the candidate will fill the void, giving you more in-depth answers.
   • Try to find out a little about the candidate’s motivation for changing jobs and interest in the role.
   • Make notes – this will help you with decision making.
   • Know about bias and try to avoid making biased decisions – hiring someone like you; first impression bias; favouring either the first person interviewed or the last person interviewed; or similarly putting too much weight on either the first or last thing a candidates says.