Top 5 Hiring Mistakes - The E-Book

I've been a recruiter for some time now. In a past life I was an engineer so I tend to look at things analytically. One of my recent projects was to look at what mistakes companies make when they hire candidates. As a recruiter, you get insight into the hiring process of many companies. There is a vast difference in styles and capabilities for these companies in how they run their business but also in how they attract and hire talent. This led me to examine the topic of what are the Top 5 Hiring Mistakes?

The Research - To answer this question I stated looking at the placements that worked and the ones that failed. For the ones that failed, was it the case that the process of interviewing and selecting candidates was flawed and the company lost a good candidate or was it the candidate(s) we presented. We talked to candidates after interviews and asked them about what they were asked and what styles of interviews the went on etc. This debrief proved insightful.

The second piece of data was to talk with other recruiters and some of the hiring managers we knew. We asked them their frustrations with finding good people and what were the biggest challenges in their interview process. Had they ever lost a good candidate? What was the reason? and so on. Next we reviewed data both online and in periodicals.

The Patterns Developed -There started to develop some patterns. For instance, there are a number of companies that have very little in the way of process to their interview. We had 3 or 4 candidates go to the same company interview for the same job and meet different people who asked different questions. Some of the questions seemed to have little to no relevance to the job at hand. How can this ever work when you are comparing candidate using 2 different interview processes?

Putting It All Together - In some ways, the most difficult thing was putting it all together. There were many similar things like using your gut instinct to select the candidate and basing a hire decision on a recommendation from a friend. These are similar conditions where the decision to hire the person was not on fit and competency for the job but the intuition of the interviews. In other words, we had to take all the mistakes we found and group them. Some overlapped or were inevitable results of the other. Like having no formal interview process could lead someone to use a gut instinct to make a hire decision.

Taking a step back this astonished me because I can think of no better way to finding mediocrity than having a poor or ad-hoc hiring strategy. A company needs "A" players to win. "B" player can hold their own but do you really want too many of them. "C" Players and below at best are just taking up space. This all made no sense. The cost of a bad hire can be 2-7 times the annual salary and benefits. A couple bad hires in a bad economy could ruin a company!

The Result - It took a while but it finally came together. I was able to compile my top 5 hiring mistakes. Now I suppose it is not fair to talk about all this without telling you the mistakes but I guess I'm a big fan of mystery and so I'll give you #5 and #4 but you'll have to email me and get the pre-release of the E-book to find out the top 3. So here they are:

#5 Mistake - Candidate Infatuation. Too often employers fall in love with a candidate for all the wrong reasons, They were easy to get along with. They had a degree from MIT. A friend recommended this candidate and so on.

#4 Mistake - No Interview or Decision Process - Too many times there is no process in a company designed to help make the hiring decision. It is done simply by an individual or committee and it is never the same process twice. It just depends on who is available to interview a the time the candidate shows up. This is a recipe for mediocrity.

The E-Book. - We have finished the pre-release of the E-book. Here's the Top 5 Hiring Mistakes link, or you can send me an email or comment and we'll get that right out to you. In the mean time, if you don't have a formal process at your company and you do want to get ahead, consider developing an interview and hiring process!