Marketing Director
Without a good team of employees, very few businesses can succeed. Employees are the lifeblood of your company and can make you a huge success. So a business cannot afford to make hiring mistakes and it is important that you hire high-quality employees.
Unfortunately, this is often easier said than done with hiring mistakes happening as commonplace. Not only can there be a lot of competition for the best employees, but there are many steps to hiring an employee, which don’t always go according to plan. Hiring mistakes happen from time to time, but you should do all you can to limit them.
4 common hiring mistakes
Not keeping up with the times
Technology has changed the world, especially when it comes to business. However, in addition to changing areas like marketing, technology has also improved the recruitment and hiring process. Today it is more and more common for big and even medium-sized or small companies to use recruitment software solutions, and the most popular of those software solutions can be found at Applicant Tracking Systems. It has made everything quicker, more streamlined and ultimately more simple. Not only that, it has the potential to save many companies a ton of time and therefore – money.
Unfortunately, some companies don’t embrace technology like they should. Maybe they are afraid of change, or simply don’t believe the tech will help. If you don’t keep up with the times and utilise the technology available to you in the hiring process like applicant tracking or A.I, you may be left in the dust. If other companies are using everything at their disposal, there is a good chance they can not only get more/better applicants, but also bring those applicants through the hiring process in a more streamlined manner.
This is an easy hiring mistake to rectify.
Not being fully transparent
If you are not transparent, attracting top-of-the-line employees to work with you will be next to impossible. A common hiring mistake is having an unclear or misleading job description, meaning candidates aren’t engaged in the role or your business from the get go. Instead, you need to be clear about not only the job in the description, but also the type of person you are looking for to fill it.
In addition to being transparent on the job description, you also need to ensure the employee knows everything about what they will be doing. No one wants to be left confused about what their duties are, so be sure to be clear. If you truly don’t know what the job or position entails, be honest with the new employees about that.
Not casting a wide enough net
When trying to hire a new employee, you want to get the best worker possible. To give yourself the best chance of doing this you need to cast a wide net. The more people you reach, the better the chance that you get a great fit. If you post your jobs in the same few places in the same few ways, you are going to continue to get the same few applicants.
People in the modern day don’t use the newspaper to find a job, they use the internet. You need to post your job on online job boards, get it on sites they check out, and share the opening with agencies. The more different ways you share the job opening, the better the chance you find someone worth hiring.
Again this is an easy hiring mistake to rectify.
Talking more than listening in an interview
When a company holds a job interview, it is to find out if an employee is a good fit or not. However, some interviewers end up doing the classic hiring mistake of talking too much in the interview, which limits how much you actually learn about an applicant. This is a very common problem, with a very easy solution, talk less and listen more.
An interviewer should only talk about a quarter of the time, and listen for the rest. You need to ask short and important questions that warrant lengthy responses. The more open-ended questions you ask, the more you will learn about the potential employee.
Hiring mistakes; summary
To talk to us further about common hiring mistakes or for help hiring for your latest job vacancy, contact us today.
