March 25, 2024
Six Hiring Mistakes to Avoid
CEO & Chairman, MaxSys
Hiring mistakes can cost your company big-time. A bad hire can damage morale, hurt productivity and even cause reputational damage. More expense comes if you have to fire the person and start the whole recruitment process over again.
Mistake No. 1 – Losing sight of your business strategy
Too often, business owners are focused on filling positions ASAP. However, no matter how urgent the situation may seem, it’s important to take time to think about your strategic plan and how your new employee will fit in. What is your company’s competitive advantage? How do you plan to grow? What skills are you missing?
Mistake No. 2 – Failing to see recruiting as a marketing challenge
Especially at a time of near full-employment, talented job seekers have lots of options. They will be studying you just as closely as you are studying them.
Putting your best foot forward starts with your website. You should brush up your overall branding and also have a recruitment page where you lay out your employer value proposition—what your company stands for and what you offer employees.
Mistake No. 3 – Passively waiting for candidates to apply
Your initial goal is to put together a pool of qualified candidates from which to select your new employee. Of course, you should post your position on job sites, industry employment boards and your social media pages. But you need to go further and actively seek out strong candidates. You can search for promising profiles on LinkedIn and find top performers working for your competitors, suppliers and even your customers. You can also encourage your existing employees to refer candidates by offering them a bonus if someone is hired and still with the company after six months.
Mistake No. 4 – Ignoring groups of potential employees
Competition for skilled labour is already intense in many parts of the country and the situation is only going to get worse with the slowdown in Canadian workforce growth. Yet, many employers are ignoring large pools of potential candidates.
Recent immigrants, Indigenous workers and the disabled all offer rich potential to entrepreneurs.
Mistake No. 5 – Taking a haphazard approach to the selection process
Once you have a pool of candidates, it’s time to winnow the list down and make a decision. This is the stage where many entrepreneurs rely on their intuition to choose employees. But research shows a more objective approach leads to better hiring decisions. How do you do it? Start with a process that’s the same for all candidates—the same criteria for reviewing résumés, same skills or cognitive ability tests, same interview questions.
Judgment will still play a major role in the final decision, especially when you have a number of candidates who score similarly. But a structured process will help you make well-reasoned decisions.
Mistake No. 6 – Asking bad interview questions First and foremost, you should be aware of the questions you cannot legally ask because they violate human rights legislation. These include ones that touch on a person’s race or ethnic origin, age, sexual orientation, marital and/or family status and financial situation. Much better questions are tightly focused on work. These are interview questions that will help you identify employees who will excel in your workplace. Spend some time researching your questions and make sure to use a list. The effort you put into this and other recruitment strategies should pay off for years to come.