HireBetter Blog

The Three Huge Hiring Mistakes You Didn’t Know You Make

October 21st, 2011 | by | hirebetter, hiring, human resources, job descriptions, recruiting, talent

Oct
21

Every company can improve their hiring in some way.  And given how important successful hiring is, it’s scary to think that two-thirds of companies continue to make bad hires.  Here are three key hiring mistakes many companies make when hiring a new employee.  Are you making any of them?

 

Mistake number one: You pass off hiring duties to the wrong people       

You wouldn’t let an office manager design a factory or a chemist balance your budget.  You leave those jobs up to the experts.  But when it comes to hiring, many companies let just about anyone take charge of a hiring task. Building a great workforce is too important to leave in untrained hands, so make sure that only skilled talent experts run your search.

 

Mistake number two: You improperly define roles

The second big mistake is just as dangerous.  Maybe you are hiring good people, but the job just doesn’t match up with their skillset.  Or you’re settling because you can’t imagine what an ideal candidate even looks like.  If you can’t properly define a role and come up with an actionable plan to fill it, you’re doomed from the start.

 

Mistake number three:  You insufficiently assess the person you hire

When you make a hire, you’re not just bringing a collection of skills and experience onboard, you’re teaming up with a person.  Many companies get into trouble because they only look at easy to compare, conventional metrics and then hire the person who interviews the best.  You have to know how to thoroughly assess a candidate to get a good idea of who they truly are, and that’s not easy to do!  Very few know how to vet a candidate like that.

 

Bad hirers: There’s hope!

Luckily, these three mistakes are very curable.  HireBetter is committed to delivering the systems and expertise companies need to confidently make great hiring decisions.  We work with companies to define exactly what role they need to fill, determine what that ideal candidate looks like, and then deliver the very best candidates to you.  If you’re ready to start making great hires, contact us, and see how we can help you HireBetter.

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Is Your Hiring Process Like The Telephone Game?

September 8th, 2011 | by | communication, hiring, human resources, management, recruiting, talent, uncategorized

Sep
08

Have you ever played the “telephone game?”  You know, the one where one person tells a word to one person, who tells another, who tells another, and so on…What always happens?  The last person has a totally different word.  Almost without fail, the word doesn’t make it around the room.

This simple childhood game was supposed to teach us about how unreliably we pass messages along to others.  But why do so many hiring processes seem oddly similar to this?  Does the following situation sound familiar to you?

A cumulative error

An upper manager (or CEO) decides that they need to make a new hire.  They briefly tell a lower manager to find some candidates during a regular staff meeting.   That manager goes to their administrative assistant or a Human Resources employee and asks him or her to write a job description that they post online.  Then, a different low level employee sorts through incoming resumes and passes some back to the lower manager, who performs phone interviews on a few of them.

Finally, the (weak) candidates interview once or twice with the upper manager who realizes that none of them really fit what they were looking for.  They either send them all away and invest some real time into making a great hire, or (as happens all too often) they begrudgingly decide that one of them “will do” and likely join the sixty-seven percent of employers who make bad hires.

 

Define where you want to go and you might just get there

Isn’t it easy to see how a communication breakdown is almost expected in a scenario like this?  Don’t be foolish and fall into the trap of this kind of “easy” hiring.  Clearly define your role and make sure everyone in the hiring process knows what you need.  In our next post, we’ll help you do just that!

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