If people can move mountains with their determination and hard work, one can easily gauge the vitality and strength of a determined human resource lot. Having the best talent work for you can ensure wonders for your organization. The best of the strategies, technology, processes will not give any result unless the best people are hired to manage them.
“Hiring the Best is your most important task”, said Apple Founder, Steve Jobs. The trick to make sure that is the best talent is acquired is by following a near-perfect hiring process. Unfortunately, the hiring process gets derailed by the mistakes hiring managers commit.
The top 10 hiring mistakes business owners make while undertaking the hiring process can be summed up somewhat as below to help you make better and informed hiring decisions.
- Holding up the Recruitment Process: Time is money!. So, delaying the hiring process is one of the biggest hiring mistakes companies make. As soon as a vacancy appears, the hiring team must swing into action to find the most suitable fit for the profile.
- Wanting to hire someone similar to the former employee: Organizations try to find a candidate who bears similarity to the previous employee. The business gets accustomed to the working of the past employee so much that they unconsciously want to hire anyone who possesses same characteristics and working style.
- Ambiguous job-specifications: Companies ignore the significance of updating the job specifications as and when the vacancy arises. Either the specifications are too old that they do not reflect the real job or they are too short to convey any meaningful information to the prospects. Owing to the dynamic nature of every work profile, the hiring team must keep on updating the specifications of the job so as to give out a vivid description of what the job is all about. It helps getting the most suitable applications for the profile.
- Not preparing for the interview: It is not always the applicant who needs to prepare thoroughly for an upcoming interview, the same goes for the employer as well. To ensure hiring of the best candidate, make sure you ask the right set of questions. The questions must be framed carefully in advance by the hiring team for eliciting the right responses and getting to know the real appropriateness of the aspirant.
- Personal prejudices and outlooks: This is another common hiring mistake, do not let your personal biases and approaches affect the interview and the candidature of the applicant. Avoid missing out on a very good job-seeker owing to your personal dispositions.
- Not taking inputs from the department for which hiring is undertaken: The hiring team must gather information about the position from the team or the department for which recruitment is done. The employees, who are already working in the same department and are going to share their work with the newly hired, would definitely have great information to disclose relating to the work profile.
- No reference check: One of the biggest blunders is not to check on the references provided by the candidate. It is highly important as checking from the previous employers assures you of the integrity and suitability of the candidate. It is also better to talk to someone rather than ask feedback over email.
- Ignoring cultural suitability: Concentrating only on education, skill-set and experience can be a big hiring mistake. Even the most suitable candidates might find it hard to deliver their best in case they fail to adjust to the hiring organization’s work environment. Therefore, it is important to ascertain that the candidate would be able to fit in without much effort.
- No follow-up with the candidates: Do not neglect the candidates for long and inform them about the result of the interview as soon as you take the final recruitment decision. The candidates are left in a lurch when they keep on expecting a call while the company has wound up its hiring process. This might fetch negative feedback for the company; after all, candidates are also consumers in a way.
- Lack of training: A productive recruitment process does not end with just zeroing in on the right candidate; it must also entail a sound training plan to help the candidate learn or unlearn to adjust better and quickly. The candidate will feel lost in the new environment without proper on-boarding. It will hamper the productivity of the company as well as the newly hired employee.
Hiring and then firing owing to mistakes committed by the hiring team might prove detrimental for the organization. It will never let the environment be stress free as a faulty hiring process will end up with adverse outcomes for the employees and the organization alike. So, go for a constructive hiring process by eluding the above enumerated mistakes and get the right people for each job role.