Top 5 Reasons the Wrong People Get Hired and How to Prevent It

Hiring is a manager’s most important responsibility. Making the decision to hire the right person instead of the wrong one is the difference between making your job a dream or your worst workplace nightmare.

Consider the following scenario:

One of your employee is late for work every day and ignores the assignments he is given.  Other employees have to make up for his poor quality work. Does your staff wonder how he got hired? And now, are you asking yourself the same question?

There are five common reasons why the wrong people get hired. They are also easy to avoid. Use the following list to see if any of them are causing you to make costly hiring mistakes:

Do the math: On the one hand, hiring a $45,000-per-year employee is a five-year investment of $225,000 plus benefits. On the other, you would probably assign a task force that would work a week or more investigating options before making a recommendation if you were making a decision to purchase a $150,000 piece of equipment like a phone system or computer network.

Solution: You can prevent hasty decisions that may result in costly bad hires by allowing adequate time to use a well-planned hiring process.

Do you start interviewing people before you have defined the purpose of the job and its accountabilities or Key Result Indicators? Have you established the specific duties and qualifications candidates must have to fill the position? As Yogi Berra famously said, “If you don’t know where you are going, you will wind up someplace else.”

Solution: Get very clear about what you are looking for even before you begin to recruit, look for candidates or interview anyone.

Do you know the characteristics that are essential for a new hire to perform the job effectively? What exactly does “likes working with people” mean? Is it the same as “provides exceptional customer service” or “can work with minimal supervision?”

Solution: Use a process (we call it job-benchmarking) to determine the specific talents and characteristics required for success in the particular position.

Do you often make hiring decisions within the first 30 seconds of an interview based on gut feeling? Research has consistently shown that managers that are not trained in interviewing do no better than making a random choice in selecting the most qualified candidates. Many attributes like hardy handshakes, pleasant smiles, posture and grooming are important but not reliable predictors of success.

Solution: Validated assessments and job-relevant interview questions that minimize being influenced by the “Halo Effect” can improve your chances of selecting the best candidates.

5. I place too much importance on credentials and past performance.

Do you consider experience, education, and technical know-how the primary factors that determine results on the job? A well-crafted resume with glowing titles and years of relevant appearing experiences are not necessarily indicators of success because the requirements and expectations of the job
will likely change dramatically. Unless you hire for potential, you may end up with an under performer in a key role, and he or she will likely need to be replaced.

Solution: Use the validated, job-relevant “Job-Talent Fit” process that compares the talent assessment of each candidate with the requirements of the job. This adds a measure of objectivity which can be the basis for up to one third of the hiring decision—not a substitute for the hiring manager’s judgment.

 

What to Do About It

Click on the following link to get the free executive summary report, “The Top Three Reasons Hiring Processes Are Broken and What to Do About It”