7 Reasons Why You Hired The Wrong Person

7 Reasons Why You Hired The Wrong Person

The Cost OF Hiring The Wrong Person

Adding an employee or replacing someone who is performing poorly can be time-consuming, stressful, and expensive. A CareerBuilder survey reported that the majority of hiring managers report hiring the wrong person and the cost to employers was $14,900 for every hiring error they made.  Before you bring someone new onboard, it pays to develop and implement a formal hiring process, but before you do that, you might want to spend some time figuring out where you’ve gone wrong in the past.

After years of working with business owners, sales leaders, senior executives, and managers, we’ve put together a list of the seven most common reasons why the wrong person gets hired so often:

7 Reasons You Hired The Wrong Candidate

1. In a Hurry. You needed someone yesterday so you took one of the first people who applied. Maybe you had to fire someone, or someone left voluntarily without much notice. So you wanted to hire someone fast so you could keep your customers happy and now you regret making that rash decision.
2. Going With Your Gut. Many of us who have hired people in the past think we are good at hiring and are a great judge of character. But the reality is that there are people who are great at interviewing well, especially if you only skim the surface and do not take the time to ask good, behaviorally-based questions.
3. Presuming Their Past Performance Automatically Qualifies Them.  Someone may have done well in another company but your job, the company culture, your customers, vendors, market, products, services, supervisor, and team are different.  Past performance does not equal future performance.
4. You Let Someone Pressure You Into Taking Shortcuts. You let an influential staff member, board member, high-level executive, or even a good friend push forward a candidate who you didn’t thoroughly vet. You didn’t take the time to check whether the candidate was actually qualified for the job. Now, this new hire is damaging your relationships with your customers, and your business partners. And worse yet, you’ll be blamed for the bad hire, not the person who referred them.
5. You Didn’t Take Time To Thoroughly Check References. This doesn’t mean calling those people listed on the candidate’s resume, who could be a best friend, an uncle, or a well-meaning neighbor. Instead, dig deeper: speak with their former managers, customers, and peers. Just be sure you know your company’s policies for blind reference checks. (LinkedIn can be a great tool for this kind of investigation.)
6. Not using a profile or competency map for that specific position. Unless you have a clear, documented specification of what skills, traits, and behaviors are required for job success, finding the right person will be close to impossible.
7. Disregarding proven tools that are readily available. These can include assessments, background checks, simulations, behavioral interviews, and a host of other resources that are easy and often inexpensive.

Made Bad Hires? You Are Not Alone

If you’ve ever hired the wrong person you are not alone; studies show that up to 74% of employers reported hiring the wrong person for a position, but when you’re hiring, it’s significantly easier to avoid making a mistake than it is to solve employee problems. Implementing a formal hiring process long before you start collecting resumes not only ensures that you will hire the right person for the job, it will also save you time, stress, and money.

What Is Job Benchmarking?

A formal hiring process should include Job Benchmarking and Talent Matching. Job Benchmarking allows you to enable the “Key Stakeholders” to define and prioritize Key Accountabilities/Goals/Job description for the role. This enables the Stakeholders to create metrics to measure short and long-term success in the job.

What Is Talent matching or Job Matching?

Talent matching, also known as Job Matching helps you choose the right person for the job based on assessments they complete which helps to rate them on how well they match the requirements of the job. Comparison reports can even compare up to 5 candidates.

To learn more-register for a free consultation.