By: Ron Guest, Senior Partner TwoGreySuits
www.twogreysuits.com
[email protected]
Ok, most managers I know will admit to making hiring mistakes with some hiring mistakes being in the ‘very expensive mistake’ category. In this blog I will attempt to answer the ‘why’ behind hiring mistakes and also offer up the solution going forward. The true cost of hiring mistakes is always more than what meets the eye. Researched estimates of hiring mistakes costs are between 1.5 and 2X the annual salary of the person hired if they don’t work out.
Hiring is serious business, but not taken as seriously as it should in many cases in my experience. ie) very poor interview preparation – little meaningful interviewing experience, lack of up to date job description or sometimes no job description at all, no list of hard or soft skills required, no behavioral interview questions, no 2nd opinion in the process, no references, no interview notes, no means to compare candidates, no formal candidate assessment, poor presentation of the hiring company, etc. The list goes on.
When companies repeatedly make hiring mistakes, at some point the tendency sometimes is to let the non-performing new hire stay far too long in the job in the hope that it will work out…but at the expense of other well performing employees, negatively affecting company culture and values along the way. This is a lose/lose proposition.
If references are done properly, you can glean as much aggregate information as you can during an interview. (fyi, my reference check form is 12 pages long) (on the website)
While gut feel has a place in interviewing, it simply cannot be the over riding factor in making hiring decisions, yet many times, this prevails, and yes even in cases of hiring executives. Even worse is the thought that – ‘we’ll just try them out’. That is unfair to the candidate, current employees and is for certain the most costly and inefficient way of hiring good qualified candidates.
Here are the 5 things to consider to eliminate future hiring mistakes:
1. Source candidates beyond simply posting the job
2. Prepare properly for the interview (numerous factors here)
3. Ask non conventional and behavioral interview questions
4. Become a student of Behavioral Interviewing
5. Let a professional do it for you
Sourcing candidates in various ways can glean you a decent list of candidates. This includes considerable networking, direct head hunting, postings on various platforms, involving your staff (referral programs) and sometimes purposely seeing non-conventional candidates or ones that may not be considered by most people.
THERE IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR PROPER INTERVIEW PREPARATION – you can’t fake it, no matter how hard you try. Proper preparation means an up to date job description with input from several sources. Understanding the job in detail and the behavioural attributes are critical. There is an assessment ranking form (excel spreadsheet formulae) for this on our website www.twogreysuits.com for members called ‘Competencies Questionnaire’ in the HR basics module. (for non-members, direct message me and I will send to you)
Knowing what behaviours you require and how the candidate measures up will in large part determine the future ‘fit’ of the candidate. We get at these behaviours by asking behavioural based interview questions. The premise behind behavioural interviewing is that ‘past behaviour is the best predictor of future behaviour’. Human beings are creatures of habit and one of the surest and most predictable things we can know about someone is that the way they have behaved in the past will very likely continue in the future. So, we ask example type questions such as “Tell me about a time when you behaved less professional than you would have liked, what was the situation, what was the outcome, would you or did you do it again?” This question might be asked when ‘professionalism’ is ranked very high in terms of candidate attributes or required behaviours. Think of a company where their brand is literally everything and you have a sales or customer service person acting unprofessionally to potential or current customers, it goes against what the company stands for and the person not being highly professional simply will not fit in that environment. ( true – I have ruled out several candidates based on their answer to this one question alone) Behavioural interviewing requires patience and understanding and practice. When asking for examples of previous situations when their behaviour was on display, always ask for examples only which can be confirmed in a reference, almost no exceptions. (this works to take out the ‘embellishment’ or BS factor)
Ask questions to see the person’s level of self awareness, ask how others who know them very well would describe them…their personality, the way they think, the way they act, also ask them what they themselves consider to be unique or different about themselves. (most people never think about this) Also ask who would verify this in a reference.
At the end of a well done interview you should be able to formulate a very informative story about the person on paper; their career path, their beliefs, concerns, ideas and also question marks you may still have about their candidacy. I normally have 3 typed pages of the interview story to present to clients, also with a section of “My Comments” or how I interrupt the interview. It is normal to take 60 minutes+ even in the first interview, unless you see something early on that is a show stopper.
The last but not least thing you can do is hire a professional to do it for you. (highly recommended) However this can carry a very high risk factor. Let me explain.
Highly skilled interviewers/recruiters are hard to find. They’re out there for sure, but they are in the minority no question. In my view only 10% or less of recruiters fall into what I would call the ‘professional’ category. You can normally find good recruiters by word of mouth. Contingency recruiting firms are notorious for having unskilled/junior recruiters who are compensated by the number of hires with literally no quality metrics at all. Of course they are very good at sending resumes quickly, but this is not really what professional recruiting is all about. (it is however what satisfies the many companies who are in panic mode hire)
What you really want is a seasoned professional recruiter who has a defined/proven process, a track record, maybe several thousand 1:1 interviews under their belt. Retained search recruiters hire and interview specifically for the job, contingency recruiters often have done the ‘generic’ interview several months before, or do a cursory interview for the job in an effort to ‘sell’ the candidate to the company. Retained recruiters will not work as contingency recruiters unless perhaps there is an ‘exclusive time period’ in the contract, meaning no other recruiter can work on it during this time. Companies not used to Retained Search often will initially balk at the cost, but to be sure, in almost all cases this cost ends up being considerably less than doing it by trial and error and the quality of candidate difference is always a huge factor to consider.
Hiring is very serious business, it’s time to take it more seriously. How prepared are you to stop making hiring mistakes?
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