Ineffective Hiring Practices
One of the most difficult challenges facing hiring managers today is determining who will be the brightest, hardest working and best asset to their team and company. Despite the profound importance of this decision, there are several real life blunders that can compromise someone’s ability to choose the best from the rest.
1. Gut Feeling
This is one of my favorites. A hiring manager I worked with several years ago told me that they have an acute “gut feeling” for picking successful hires. The problem with relying on this alone is that it’s not a reliable measure. Sure, there are clues that candidates give in an interview that might give you the “gut feeling” they are wrong for a job (i.e. they claim to be detail oriented but show up 15 minutes late for the interview and refer to you as Janet when your name is really Kristy); but, on average the “gut feeling” you get should encourage you to gather more information to confirm or contradict your suspicions. The feeling you get should not be ignored, but it should be complemented with other things like behavioral interviewing to truly help predict a successful hire.
2. Disorganization
Some hiring managers purposefully opt not to prepare interview questions ahead of time, relying on intuition to guide them through conversation. The risk involved with this method is that it can give the impression of disorganization to the candidate. Questions may arise in their mind about whether the interviewer is serious about hiring for the position if they have not taken the time to prepare prior to the meeting. Not only can this affect the candidate’s view of the individual, it can influence the candidate’s view of the company as a whole. The candidate experience is extrememly important to attracting top talent.
3. Grilling candidates
This method of interviewing is sometimes used to see how candidates deal with high-pressure scenarios. Some believe that if a candidate can answer questions well under fire, they will perform will in the job. A word of caution: not all jobs have high-pressure situations like this and candidates can easily misunderstand the practice. If the job entails high-pressure presentations, have the candidate prepare a 10-15 minute presentation on a topic they might encounter on the job. Using real, on-the-job scenarios in the interview will give you a better understanding of how the candidate will fit in the role, or “try before you buy.”
4. Assessments
Assessments can be very effective in predicting someone’s success in a role. They provide additional sources of data and many of them are statistically tied to helping you make a better hire. The criteria, however, is that the assessment is only useful if it is connected to something they would either be required to know or do in the role you are hiring them for. An assessment of their Excel formula skills is only a good assessment if they are required to know how to create and use formulas in their day-to-day work.
Hiring is far from easy, but you can control some of the elements mentioned above and drastically improve your odds of hiring the “A” player you want.
– Kevin Servino, Recruiter
