The Top Ten Hiring Mistakes for Big Business

 

People make mistakes with the way that they hire all the time. If they didn’t, we would see a lot less quitting and a lot less firing in the world of Canadian Business. 

Avoiding the following mistakes is absolutely no guarantee that you will have a lower turnover rate in your company but at least you will know that you are doing all that you can to ensure that people are being chosen for the right reasons and not the wrong reasons.

 

 

Fit is a very interesting concept to examine because fit can mean anything and everything you want it to mean. Fit can mean age, it can mean gender, it can mean personality, or it can mean anything you feel about this candidate in an interview.

This means that you can miss out on some great candidates because you have decided that they don’t fit into your company. They may legitimately be wrong for you or you could have some underlying bias that makes you not look at candidates objectively. Make sure you know the difference.

 

 

You have an image of what you want your company to look like. You want people to come into your office and have it “look” a certain way. That is a great attitude if you are shooting a catalogue, not such a good attitude if you want to fill your openings with great people.

It can be a huge hiring mistake to overlook potentially fantastic and loyal employees who don’t fit into the mold of how you want your company to look to the outside world.

 

 

It’s great to hire people based on goals or objectives that you have for your company. Ideally, you want people to be able to get you to where you need to go.

What you don’t want to do, however, is to focus solely on productivity and goal orientation. Some people are great at making other people feel good at work. People who feel good work harder. Some people are good at getting people to reach a consensus. This is hard to measure but equally important to getting the job done. The ability to generate money for your company is not enough of a reason to hire someone.

 

 

Sometimes you hire someone because their mother or grandfather is one of your best customers and you just can’t say no. What happens if this person is terrible and you have to get rid of them? Hiring because you want to do a favor for someone is just a bad idea no matter who, what or why.

 

 

Hiring takes thought and foresight. It takes knowing what you need long term. It means having an idea of where your company is going in the next five years and how you plan to use this employee to get there. Hiring without thinking ahead and having a rough idea of how this new person will fit into the general plan is usually a mistake.

 

 

I cannot stress enough how important strategic plans are to the hiring process. If you know that you are planning on going in a specific direction or that you have specific goals for your organization, it is imperative that your HR department is part of this process. You don’t want hiring to be done in a bubble. You want talent to be brought into your organization that will support your over all goals.

 

 

Sometimes you have sleeper talent within your organization that will actually be the greatest asset to your company in a new and tangential role. Don’t pigeonhole people and make them stick to the job trajectory that they are currently on. Be creative.

 

Let people who are invested in your organization take a shot at jobs that may not be exactly what they have trained for. You may be surprised at how well people can do when they already understand your culture.

 

 

Often we interview someone who seems like the perfect candidate and we get giddy with excitement that we have found the right person for the job. We feel ready to take the plunge and make an offer of employment. The only thing that we forget to do is check the references carefully. Checking references is just as important as good interviewing.

 

In fact, a good reference check is an interview. You need to get as much information as you can about the candidate. You need to learn things that you might not be able to find out when you are face to face with a great prospect. You need to know how people felt working with this person, how they handled pressure, how they communicated with the people that they worked with. That way you will have a very in depth knowledge of whether or not this person is right for you.

 

 

There are some incredible tests out there to figure out if a job candidate meets your criteria. These tests have become so good that you can almost bank on the candidate being exactly what the test predicts them to be. Get your prospects tested and you won’t regret it.

 

 

This is perhaps the biggest mistake that people make. When you have turnover in your organization, it is essential to the health of your company to find out why.

 

Did they leave because their manager didn’t manage them well? Did they leave because the team or the task wasn’t supportive? Did they leave because no one likes to work in your company? They could have left for personal reasons but either way, it is better for you to know why so you can do the work that you need to do to avoid high turnover.

 

There is no guarantee that new hires are going to continue working for you for any length of time. You never know if people are what they seem or will produce what you hired them to produce. To try and reduce high turn over, try not to make the common mistakes that make you hire the wrong people.