There’s nothing worse than investing time and energy into hiring someone and finding out you’ve made a mistake. Recruiters fear that after weeks of pouring through resumes and talking to candidates, they’ll select the wrong one. A bad hire can be a drain on the organization from multiple angles. It costs money to hire and train someone who ultimately won’t work out. And it can drag down the morale when someone new is introduced and then exited. It can cause a sense of fear and panic to reverberate throughout the organization. But what if you can prevent bad hires upfront? What if you can pick apart your hiring process to prevent bad hires? Let’s examine the steps within the hiring process that can be improved to prevent a bad hire.
Enhance Your Hiring Process to Prevent Bad Hires
Every company’s hiring process is different. But some companies have their hiring process down to a science. They run like well oiled machines and seem to attract the best candidates. What are they doing differently in order to attract better candidates and prevent bad hires? According to Talent Board’s 2014 Candidate Experience Report , top companies are creating better candidate experiences with transparency and support. These top companies are operating in tune with what candidates desire.
We’re in an age where information is plentiful. We are literally bombarded with messaging at all angles. To find out anything, we can hop on our smart phones and surf the information super highway for answers. But some companies are still stuck in the past. They don’t offer information up front to draw top candidates. This is where you can enhance your hiring process. Your organization can move beyond simply offering a career page to branding it to attract top talent. This is where the company can really shine: you can offer insights into teams, company culture, and branded videos to appeal to the top candidates. Great companies often take it a step further and offer immersive interviews via video interview software. This allows candidates to get the full experience of what joining this company would be like. Often, these kind of information rich hiring processes are able to prevent bad hires.
Review Expectations Up Front
Sometimes, a bad hire is not the result of the hiring process, but really unrealistic expectations. We’ve all heard stories where candidates were hired on for a role like marketing, but the hiring manager’s uncommunicated expectation was that this hire would produce their yearly salary in sales in their first month. These kinds of expectations should be examined up front by both the hiring manager and the recruiting or HR department. Sometimes, if expectations are not realistic or in alignment with the position, it can produce a bad fit. In these cases, the new employee could be confused about how they fit into your organization. A careful review of these expectations can help prevent hiring someone that will ultimately be classified as a bad hire.
Similarly, job descriptions should be carefully reviewed prior to posting. Does an hourly cashier position truly require a bachelor’s degree? Or will this kind of requirement produce a smaller talent pool that is more likely to leave when another opportunity comes along? These kinds of questions are crucial to the hiring process. By addressing these concerns prior to posting, your team can work together to prevent bad hires.
Realign and Recommit to Quality Hires
Once a recruiting strategy is in place, it’s up to the recruiting team to pursue quality candidates. By auditing these critical steps in the process, an organization can work towards preventing a bad hire. But it’s not a fool proof system. Sometimes, recruiters have an off day. And sometimes, candidates lie convincingly enough to get hired. With these steps in place, these kinds of mistakes should be minimized and produce quality hires over time.
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