6 Biggest Hiring Mistakes You Need to Avoid

When it comes to hiring new employees, it’s easy to end up making snap decisions, especially when you’re pressed for time. Met someone who can hold a proper conversation and got dazzling grades in college? Hired! A colleague put in a good word for them? Hired!

If this sounds like something you’d do, then you need a change of perspective. Hiring recklessly and without careful thought only promises you a world of trouble.

But fear not—these mistakes can be easily avoided. Here are the six most common hiring mistakes and how you can avoid them:

1. Hiring without having a set process

While meeting and interviewing candidates for the job, it becomes all too easy to hire someone based on “gut feel”. You meet the seemingly perfect candidate, and suddenly, all the other candidates become uninteresting and you’re drawing up contracts after just barely meeting them.

That’s what happens when you don’t have a set process for hiring. It can’t simply be “hold interviews and see what happens”. Before you even schedule those interviews, you need to plan a process so that you don’t get sidetracked. Without a process, the candidate hunt might go on for too long (or cut too early) and you’ll end up hiring the wrong people.

Here are some great questions that will challenge your candidates and tips to creating the ideal recruitment process.

2. Not knowing what you’re looking for and for what role

Not knowing exactly what kind of person you need to hire often leads to hiring “generalists,” or people who are generally good at everything, but not at what you actually need.

Before delving into the recruitment process, make it crystal clear what kind of person you need for the job and what the job position entails. This also lets potential candidates know what you need and saves both you and the candidate a lot of time, energy, and money.

During the interview and screening process, have a scorecard with specific criterion so you can properly rate and rank your candidates. This will speed up the process and help you quickly eliminate those who aren’t fit for the job.

3. Hiring without testing candidates

It’s incredibly easy to believe someone when they say they’re the cream of the crop or they can do X thing in X amount of time. But are they really what they say they are?

One way to double-check this is by giving them a series of tests. You can find tons of tests online that will gauge proficiency and aptitude, depending on your field of business. You can also create your own test and see how they fare.

You can opt to give it right after the interview as this will show how they really work since they’d have virtually no time whatsoever to prepare.

In short, make sure you test your candidates one way or another so that you can really determine who’s the best of the best.

Here are 9 examples of creative hiring tests you can use for your process.

4. Not asking for enough references

Another way to confirm if a candidate is as great as they claim they are is to ask for multiple references. Simply calling a former boss or two may seem like enough, but most of the time, candidates already ask their former superiors to put in a good word for them.

To avoid this trap, ask their former supervisors if you can also talk to their colleagues. Colleagues can tell you how the candidate is in the workplace, their work ethics, and their general behavior.

Ideally, try to call at least five to seven references from different companies and workplaces. This allows you to get the whole picture of who your candidate really is.

Check out Proven’s article on what to ask references when calling about a candidate.

5. Relying purely on job posts

They say that the best candidates for the job are rarely ever looking for one. Those who lurk on job posting sites are usually the ones who are fresh out of college or don’t have plenty of references to back them up.

Job posts may find you a gem or two, but it’s also important to look for candidates with the help of your social network. Ask people in your field if they know anyone fit for the job, and chances are one of those recommendations will turn out to be your next best employee.

6. Discussing compensation right away

When you first meet a candidate, think of it like a first date. On the first date, you wouldn’t ask how much money they make; it makes you look money-obsessed. In the same way, bringing up compensation right away would lead to a number of consequences.

When candidates hear the figure, they may either be instantly turned off or become far too eager to take the job simply because of the money. Both of these scenarios aren’t ideal since they can lead to bad decisions on both sides.

Bringing up compensation also emphasizes the monetary part of the job, when instead, you should emphasize the non-monetary benefits, such as employee perks, career opportunities, and the like.

However, if it’s the candidate that brings up the topic straight away, this may be a red flag. Redirect the topic by saying that they should be more concerned about the benefits of the job as another step in their career, rather than a source of pay. After all, they should first be trying to persuade you that they’re fit for the job before anything else.

The hiring process is a particularly tricky one. There’s no foolproof way to do it, so don’t be afraid to use some unorthodox methods.

It may also take a while before you find the right fit for you, but once you do, you’d be grateful that you worked so hard to find them. Hiring the right people is ultimately the best thing you can do for your company as the employees are, essentially, the backbone of the company.

After hiring your new employees, it’s also equally important to make sure you train them well and help them adjust to the culture and pace of the workplace. Cultivating great employee-boss relationships is a sure-fire way to improve your company’s performance and motivate your employees to perform to the best of their abilities.

So, good luck with your hiring endeavours and may you find the perfect piece to your company’s puzzle!