Regardless of what the open position in your organization is, the importance of finding the right qualified candidate is paramount. From the front desk assistant to the head of HR to the customer satisfaction advocate – each of these people play strategic roles. Otherwise, why would their position, and their salaries, exist?
A single bad hire can seriously deplete a business’s resources and minimize profitability. When word gets out that your recruitment standards aren’t that high, top performers in the job market begin to look elsewhere, and the subsequent downward spiral is a vicious path we’d rather not take you on. So, the next time your firm is looking to hire, don’t squander the opportunity by committing either of the following two common hiring sins.
Sin 1: Skipping the Reference Check
The purpose of requiring references is so that you may call upon them to act as character witnesses. Granted, we’ve all had situations in which our calls go unreturned, the conversation is minimally helpful, or the respondent voices overwhelming concern of their legal liability. Yet, these are not reasons to completely forego the reference checking step altogether!
Consider this: Would Brian Cashman add a new prospect to the Yankees roster without first reviewing some of their previous games? We think not. While you may not be able to get play-by-play tapes of your prospective employees in action, a reference check is just about the next best thing.
Having an automated method to check references gives you the best of both worlds by minimizing those frustrating hassles and improving data collection, all at an early stage of the hiring process. By automating the reference check and requiring at least five respondents, reference anonymity is considerably better protected. Knowing this, references provide more candid responses.
Likewise, the data aggregation of ARC allows you to collect fewer data points because those that are collected are more accurate. Instead of general questions that typically lead to general answers, the online questionnaire uses questions such as “Does this candidate prioritize tasks according to their importance?” The latter questions allow candidates to offer succinct, helpful feedback more easily.
Sin 2: Measuring the wrong traits
Beyond failing to reference check, many companies look to the assets of their top performers as benchmarkers for incoming recruits. After all, why wouldn’t we want to emulate our most productive employees? The problem, though, is that to establish an effective benchmark, it’s most important to know the difference between your strongest and weakest employees.
Potential recruits may share a lot of traits with your top performers, but they may also share too many traits with some of your weakest links. However if you’re only focused on what they can do wonderfully, there’s a good chance you’ll feel blindsided when they also turn out to play favorites and communicate poorly.
At first, overlooking the reference checks and using inappropriate qualifiers to recruit new hires may seem like relatively inconsequential activities. However, it likely won’t take long after falling prey to such common mistakes for you, and your superiors, to realize just how grave the consequences can be. So, repent, repent, and don’t do it again, and stay tuned to learn of the rest of the five deadly hiring sins!
About the Author
Greg Moran is the CEO of Chequed.com, a pre employment testing suite that features a front end behavioral assessment and automated reference checking tool. You can follow Greg on twitter @CEOofChequed.
