Hiring Mistakes – During the recruitment process, the pressure is on to find your next star member. But if your results are a little short, you can leave yourself wondering what went wrong.
From posting a job to conducting interviews, there’s plenty of room for mistakes that can prevent you from hiring the best candidate possible. Keep these tips in mind when it gets tough to make sure you don’t fall victim to some of the most common recruiting mistakes that can ruin your recruiting process.
1. Waiting for the Perfect Candidate
In an ideal world, you would find an exact match for your vacancy. And while looking for the perfect candidate may seem tempting, you may be ignoring other outstanding candidates along the way.
Keep your eyes peeled and control your expectations while browsing applications. Even if a candidate doesn’t tick all of your boxes right away, you won’t know someone’s true potential until you give them a chance.
2. Equate a strong resume with strong writing skills.
It’s easy to assume that if a candidate has a high profile resume, that must also mean that their writing skills are top-notch. However, this is not always the case. Today, many job applicants use professional resume writers to prepare their resumes and other business documents instead of doing it themselves.
3. Failing to Prepare the Candidate
The interview is your chance to get to know a candidate and analyze how they answer your questions. And while you might want to see how well a candidate thinks, make sure you’ve done your part in preparing them for the interview fundamentals.
After scheduling an interview, provide all the details that a candidate needs to know in advance, such as whether the interview will be by phone or video conferencing and the next steps in the process. While in many cases, you might want to throw some unexpected curves to test the candidate – and that’s fine – it’s also part of your job to “prepare” the candidate and let them know ahead of time what to expect.
4. Asking the wrong questions
There are countless resources for scripted interview questions that you can refer to if you are unsure of what you should ask a candidate. There’s nothing wrong with getting inspiration elsewhere, but don’t let your whole interview include cookie-cutter questions.
Dig deep into the role you are trying to fill. How should the ideal candidate manage daily activities? What general skills would be the most useful to be successful at work?
To get the most out of an interview, ask job-specific questions and more general suggestions. By adding the job-specific items, you will likely learn more about the candidate and how they might perform in the position rather than just necessary information about employment history.
5. Do not check applicant’s credentials
If you’ve found a candidate who has passed the latest round of interviews, that’s great! But before you congratulate yourself and make an offer, don’t forget to check the candidates’ references.
Simply put, some job seekers are excellent interviewees. While they may be good at answering your questions, former employers or colleagues are among the best character judges who are former employers or colleagues.
Do your due diligence and make sure to speak to all references provided by the candidate. They will likely provide more insight into the candidate’s character and personality, which you might not otherwise learn.
6. Never update your recruiting methods
Whether you’re tasked with recruiting new team members for years or just a few months, there’s always room for improving your processes.
The best hiring managers know that better and better-recruiting tactics are available and actively review their current processes and make any necessary adjustments. Make sure you are continually refining your methods rather than causing your recruiting process to become stale.
The job market is constantly changing, and your recruitment practices should evolve with it.
Building Your Dream Team
With the above tips in mind, there is no excuse to fall victim to these types of common hiring mistakes! While it is always challenging to find new team members, you have more power than you might think about leading a successful hiring process.
