What are the Most Common Hiring Mistakes?
From not preparing job benchmarks to ignoring a candidate’s personality, hiring mistakes can be a major setback to the growth of any organization.
It’s disheartening to put so much time and effort into new hires only to find out they aren’t a good fit or aren’t who they portrayed themselves to be. Plus, a bad hire can be quite expensive.
Zippia, a career research platform, found some interesting points about hiring in a recent data analysis:
The average cost of hiring a new employee is $4,425 for non-executives.
For executives, the average cost of hiring went up to $14,936.
In general, it costs about 40% of an employee’s base salary to hire a new employee.
It takes 36 to 42 days to fill an average position in the United States.
An employee vacancy costs about $98 per day.
Those costs really start to add up. These expenses can stem from training and onboarding, drug screening, purchasing new employee equipment, background checks, and more. And if that employee doesn’t work out before they can start being productive, all that money essentially goes down the drain.
While it might be difficult to steer clear of a bad hire 100% of the time, there are plenty of hiring mistakes your business can work to avoid that will help this issue. Let’s talk about the do’s and don’ts of hiring.
Top 10 Hiring Mistakes
At Moser Learning Services, we’ve observed all kinds of misled hiring criteria in the process of helping our clients hire a more agile workforce. Here are the top 10 we see most often:
Not preparing job benchmarks. Your entire hiring team should know exactly what they are looking for in the right candidate, which is where benchmarking comes into play. Benchmarking will help you measure not only a candidate’s skills, but their behaviors that make them a long-lasting fit for the job role and the company. At Moser, we use a three step process involving subject matter experts weighing in on appropriate benchmarks, a talent assessment, and a Gap report to reveal any
gaps that may be present between the job role and the candidate.Hiring on recommendation—and nothing else. Just because your business partner thinks their second cousin is perfect for a job doesn’t mean they will be. Recommendations are great ways to find employees—but don’t slack on the vetting process just because a candidate is recommended.
Failing to check references. We see most employers asking for references, which is always a good hiring practice. But don’t skip over actually contacting the references. This is an easy way to validate what candidates tell you about themselves.
Not following federal laws enforced by the EEOC. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) enforces federal laws that make it illegal to discriminate against a job applicant or employee because of that person’s race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, or genetic information. While you may not intentionally discriminate in the hiring process, keep in mind that even a casual question about whether someone is married or not would be considered discriminatory.
Ignoring a candidate’s personality. If you have a typical work week, you’re spending 40 hours a week with your employees. That’s nearly a quarter of every week! Make sure you’re building a team that will gel and work well together. We accomplish this at Moser Consulting by using DISC profiling. This shows us how others on the team may perceive each candidate, how candidates prefer to work (like alone or in a team), what they need from leadership to be successful, and more.
Going through the hiring process too quickly or slowly. Zooming through all the tasks and interviews required for hiring will certainly get someone to fill that empty seat faster—but will they be the right candidate? And on the other hand, if you take too much time during the hiring process, you may lose your favorite candidate to a competitor.
Skipping prescreening. Indeed estimated that 40% of people lie on their resumes. Simply having someone in the organization call candidates to verify resume information can weed out those that may have exaggerated or lied. This can save a lot of time in the long run—and headaches.
Failing to test candidate competency. Once you’re convinced a candidate can talk the talk, make sure they can walk the walk. With Moser’s Gap Reports, you’ll see a candidate’s top seven competencies, top four driving forces, top four job behaviors, and how those all compare to the benchmark you have set. While a hiring decision should not be made based solely on the benchmark, the goal is to hire a candidate that fits closely in all areas to avoid issues within the team and with clients.
Narrowing your recruitment options. Putting your job ad on only one job board will not reach the full pool of qualified candidates and limit your options. It never hurts to post the ad in as many places as possible. LinkedIn, Indeed, Glassdoor, job fairs, social media—cast your net wide to snag the best candidates.
Not observing your competition. Applicants are looking out for themselves first, and we wouldn’t expect any less. They will compare job ads and apply to the ones that offer the best salaries and benefits. Examining the job ads of other businesses in your industry is a great way to determine if your offer is competitive enough.
We know—hiring is tough. But by harnessing the power of job benchmarking, you’ll be well on your way to a better hiring experience.
What Do You Mean By Benchmarking?
Job benchmarking is all about defining the goals and targets of hiring new people. If you’re not sure where to start, consider using Moser Learning Services to assist you in the hiring process. We use proven techniques and subject matter experts to create our benchmarks, helping you find (and retain) the right people for the job.
Setting these benchmarks before you even begin hiring will make the whole process significantly easier and avoid many of the mistakes and traps we mentioned above. For example, at Moser, here are some of the questions we ask when creating and considering benchmarks for our clients:
What behaviors and communication style would best suit this role?
What are the daily tasks and long-term goals of this position?
What salary range and benefits can our client afford for this position? And is the offer fair when compared to current employee salaries/benefits and the offers of competition?
What’s the timeline for hiring?
What industry-specific knowledge and skills should the ideal candidate have?
What are the top competencies that are important to this role? Do we want someone who is self-starting and an influence to others, with a bit of creativity and innovation? Or is the role more suited for customer focus, personal accountability, and understanding others?
Which questions should we ask in interviews according to the skills, behaviors, and motivators we see in the Talent/DISC reports?
How big of a knowledge gap is our client willing to handle from a new hire?
What behaviors, driving forces, and competencies would work best with the current team?
There are many more questions you should be asking when it comes to job benchmarks, but these are some of the most important ones. By hiring a candidate that fits closely with the benchmark, you’ll avoid a wide variety of issues. While no candidate is perfect—we are all human, after all—the closer they are to the benchmark, the less adapting they will need to do and the less potential for conflict there will be.
How to Hire the Best Talent
Moser Learning Services
Have you encountered any of these problems associated with recruitment and selection? Or are you simply tired of all the commotion that comes with hiring? Then Moser Learning Services might be just the partner you’ve been looking for.
Our benchmarking practices help you compare skills, find skill gaps, and hire the best. No bias, no stress. And after we help you find the best candidate, we’ll guide you through the onboarding process to make sure that candidate feels comfortable in their new role. We also work with your team to ensure new hires fit in and everyone understands the best ways to communicate with one another.
Do you have more hiring and internal business needs? We design and deliver all kinds of business learning experiences, from project management to leadership to teams as a whole.
Whatever your needs are, we can help. Contact us and get one step closer to hiring the perfect workforce. See all of our learning classes and offerings on our learning page. Fill out the form there to learn more.
