Preventing Bad Hires

A few weeks ago we posted some eye-opening information about the true cost of a bad hire.  From the time you spend on interviewing, to legal expenses and unemployment costs, your company pays a high price when you hire the wrong people.

How can you avoid these costs?  It’s simple – just hire smarter!  Today, PrideStaff shares practical tips for improving your hiring process to yield better results:

• Improve your planning. 
  Before you even think about posting a job, conduct a thorough position analysis.  Determine the skills, knowledge, experience, core competencies and behavioral traits a candidate will need to succeed in the position.  If possible, benchmark top performers in the position to fully understand what the ideal candidate must be able to do.  Then, create an up-to-date job description that includes the key roles and responsibilities.
• Standardize your interviewing process. 
  Interviewer bias and inconsistency compromise your ability to identify the best candidates.  Do everything you can to standardize the process, so that you’re truly “comparing apples to apples”:
  – Develop a list of standard interview questions, using the requirements from the previous step.  Ask these questions of all candidates.
  – Train interviewers to consistently read non-verbal cues.  Make sure each interviewer understands how things like a candidate’s body language, eye contact and rate of speech can impact his first impression – so that an applicant is neither ruled in nor ruled out by subjective interviewer bias.
  – Require interviewers to back-up their evaluations or conclusions with specific candidate statements.  Train them to support their ratings with examples, as opposed to mere opinions, impressions or hunches.
• Plan multiple rounds of interviews. 
  As competition in the job market has increased, so has candidates’ temptation to commit resume fraud.  But while a recruit may be able to fake his way through one interview, the chance of him successfully misrepresenting himself across multiple interviews is extremely small.  Always conduct at least two interviews for low-level positions and three or more for higher-level jobs.
• Formalize your post-interview process. 
  Once you conduct all your interviews, you need a sound process for selecting the best candidate.  Again, standardization, training and communication are essential.  Provide a form interviewers can use to summarize each candidate’s skills, experience, areas of strength, cultural fit and technical knowledge.  Then, hold a post-interview review meeting to review feedback and get interviewers’ recommendations.

PrideStaff can help you take the guesswork out of hiring.  Our On Target fulfillment process was designed to eliminate chance and inconsistency, helping you to receive better quality candidates each and every time.

Whether your needs are temporary or direct, entry-level or management, On Target can help you increase productivity, decrease training costs, reduce staffing headaches and generally ease your hiring process.  Contact your local PrideStaff office today to learn more.