Five Recruitment Mistakes to Avoid

Does the thought of recruiting a new member of staff give you a headache?

You’re not alone, over 75% of employers have hired the wrong candidate at some point.

The exact costs of hiring the wrong person vary but statistics show it is likely to costs you 2-5 times their annual salary, so it is worthwhile spending the time and money to get the right candidate.

Here are 5 pitfalls to avoid when recruiting a new member of staff:

Relying on CVs

Have you heard the saying “Hire for skills, fire for attitude”?

This is how 95% of organisations hire staff members yet the top 5% of organisations “hire on attitude and train the skills needed” according to Harvard Business review.

Attitudes can’t or are very hard to change in a candidate, yet a CV tells you nothing of the candidate’s attitudes. On the contrary skills are generally very easy and fast to teach yet most organisations hire solely on skills. CV’s are a great way for candidates to market themselves and provide previous work experience. It doesn’t say if they were any good at their last jobs or if in fact they have any of the attitudes needed for your role.

Use CVs only as a reference to if the candidate has the essential skills needed for your role.

Picking Candidates That Don’t Fit your Culture

Build your business starting with the rocks and the stones and sand will fall into place.

The culture and values of your organisation are the “Rocks”, if these are defined and lived-by within your organisation a lot of the stones and smaller thing will fall into place or become a lot easier.

How important is honesty, respect or accountability within your culture? If these or other factors are important to your culture, would you want a candidate who doesn’t agree or live by them?

Values are normally defined within a person from a young age and are very difficult to change in later life; so unless you want the challenge of doing this make sure you get candidates to buy into your culture and values before you hire them

Relying on Instinct

Your gut instinct is great for identifying people who may be a threat and identifying people you may get on well with but is it what you want to reply on to hire your next team member?

You may or may not be surprised to hear this is pretty common especially within small and medium sized businesses.

Interviews conducted by untrained managers often turn in to informal chats, rendering them virtually useless as the recruiter learns relatively little and may jump to conclusions based on their personal report.

Using data to guide intelligent decision making when recruiting a member of staff has 2 principle benefits:

1. It will significantly increase your chases of getting the right candidate; would you lend money to someone you don’t know based on gut instinct or their credit history?

2. You protect yourself against potential discrimination cases; if you hire a candidate based on data rather than gut instinct, it is easy to provide this data to back up your decision in any potential discrimination case.

What data to use:

1. Psychometric tests designed for your specific job role

2. General behaviour assessments

3. Specific competency tests, such attention to detail assessments.

Focusing On the Wrong Competencies

Recruiters who use general behaviour assessments are far better placed to recruit the right candidate than recruiters who rely simply on CVs but they can fall into traps. General behaviour assessments like DISC and Myers Brigg don’t measure and rank candidates against the specific criteria and strength required for a particular role. These assessments are great for identifying candidates which are a good fit for your team but won’t account for a lot of the competencies needed for a particular role

It is vital to understand what behaviours and personality characteristics are required for the position you are trying to fill before effectively matching them up to a suitable candidate.

Looking in All the Wrong Places

Newspaper adverts are unlikely to find you the top talent in your industry; you have to be utilising modern technology and social networks. You’re going to find the candidate’s your business needs through social networks like LinkedIn and on job boards for specific professions.

Identifying the right job boards to advertise on to maximise your exposure to the right candidates can be a challenge, but an inbox full of unqualified candidates to sift through will likely just cause you more problems.

How to Make the Recruitment Process Simpler and More Cost Effective With igent Recruit

At igent recruit, we have teamed up with one of the UKs leading psychometric and personality testing companies to help you find and identity the right candidates for your specific role.

With the igent recruit system you will get:

1. Advertising on the UKs major job sites – ensuring the right candidates find your job advert
2. The use psychometric assessments tailored to your role – to identify the candidates who are best suited to your role
3. General behavioural (DISC) assessments for every candidate – to guide you to which candidates will best fit within your organisation
4. Advanced candidate management system – to cut down the admin time to find your candidate by more than half