Making Bad Hiring Decisions? Revamping your Hiring Process can Help

Bad hires have cost Zappos over $100 million, as estimated by CEO Tony Hsieh. Two hiring mistakes seem to have cost $ 9 million to Facebook because they failed to assess the talented candidates and rejected them. A study by Harvard revealed that biases of race and colour still guide hiring decisions. Another research reveals that 95% of organizations end up with bad hiring decisions. 

Bad hiring decisions, not only cost money to the organizations, it affects the morale of the employees, the reputation of the company, performance dips, and has many more negative consequences. So, what could be some of the most common causes of bad hiring decisions? Jeff Haden, contributing editor at Inc shares six common reasons:

1. Recruiters fail to assess candidates as a total package. Chances are that the selected employees might be talented and skilled, but are not able to follow rules and guidelines of the company.
2. Organizations end up hiring for skills and ignore attitude. A study revealed that 11 % of new recruits who failed within the first 18 months failed due to lack of motivation and willingness to be coached, temperament and emotional intelligence.
3. Organizations sell the job too hard. When an employer shows desperation to the candidate, the candidate might join the organization thinking that they are doing a favour by working for you.
4. Recruiters end up hiring friends and family. The desire to recruit friends and family out of goodwill does not always meet the requirement of the job profile.
5. Recruiters ignore their gut feeling and intuition. An organization may go through a thorough hiring process but can have an unconvincing feeling. Ignoring that feeling could end up in a bad hire.
6. Organizations end up taking chances. An encouraging recruiter might want to give a candidate a chance even though his/her past record infuses doubt about the candidate’s potential. Most probably, this will turn out to be a bad decision. 

There are a number of factors to be considered when hiring a candidate. Education, qualification, experience, attitude, emotional intelligence, social skills, potential to learn, enthusiasm, and ambition are just a few of the factors. And chances are that most recruiters find it impossible to take each factor into account.

David Hoffeld, author of The Science of Selling: Proven Strategies To Make Your Pitch, Influence Decisions, and Close the Deal, shares two comprehensive steps to decrease bad hires.

Identification

If you do not know what you want, you will not be able to find it. Yet, this is something that a lot of companies overlook. Important steps in finding the right candidate are:

• Set the criteria for a hire
• Decide how will you evaluate candidates according to the criteria
• Give them practical tests to gauge their capabilities
• Think through the specific essentials that candidates must have for a role
• Your list of essentials in a candidate must match the goal of that role. You should have clarity about why a candidate requires those qualities.
• Think through each and every point and have clear criteria in place.

Verification

Once you have identified and defined the qualities that you need in a candidate, you can proceed to verify if candidates have them through interviews and other verification methods.

• Ask the candidates to demonstrate the desired knowledge or skills.
• Give them a hypothetical problem to solve.
• Ask them to take you through each step.
• Probe for specifics.
• Assess the response that the candidates have and try to match them with the qualities that you are looking for.

Background verification can help in assessing candidates. Here’s how:

Once you are done with the interviews and assessing the candidate within the organization through interviews, bring in professional background verification. Most companies include it in the hiring processes.

• Background screening can be customized to the role requirements.
• Professional background screening companies in cities and in India have access to relevant data through which they conduct data checks. This is data that companies do not have access to or expertise to analyze.
• Employee background verification is part of risk management in hiring processes. 
• Professional verification companies have fast turnaround time and can speed up the hiring process, at the same time, assure quality resources.

So, do you think it’s time to revamp the hiring process in your company?   

References

Zappos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9C36EYM-mWQ

Facebook: https://www.smartrecruiters.com/blog/did-two-hiring-mistakes-cost-facebook-9-billion/

Harvard: https://www.inc.com/robin-camarote/a-new-harvard-study-says-theres-been-very-little-progress-in-hiring-discrimination.html

Two steps to decrease bad hires: https://www.fastcompany.com/3061879/scientists-explain-all-your-dumb-hiring-decisions

Common reasons for bad hires: https://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/6-reasons-employers-hire-the-wrong-person.html