According to Business News Daily a bad hire costs an organization anywhere from $17,000 to $240,000.
Hiring is actually a hard job.
It feels like you are searching for a needle in a haystack.
You sift through 100’s of resumes…
You conduct many rounds of interviews…
You give them tests…
Out of this, 1 or 2 stand out…
You are finally pumped to invite these new members of the “family”…
…only to realize that you have made a grave mistake.
They are a different person than the one you interviewed –
but they also make very little effort to learn the role,
make several costly mistakes, and prove to be very difficult to work with.
This is a typical common story I heard from my acquaintances at the Young Presidents Organization –
And even from the members of the COO Alliance.
After providing COO training to 1000s of people, I have realized there are 3 deadly hiring mistakes that cause 99% of your hiring problems.
Avoiding these 3 mistakes can go a long way:
Hiring Mistake #1: Hiring Only Based on the Interview:
This is a classic.
It’s more like how you order something online and realize this is not what you ordered when it arrives.
This person has a killer resume.
Their personality was outstanding in the interview. Confident, smiling & charismatic.
You just have this gut feeling that they are good.
You hire them only to realize they are not that amazing at the job.
They require a lot of training & resources to grow.
But hey! What do they say about “Hire for attitude & train for skill”?
Well…
“The old adage of ‘Hire for attitude, train for skill’ doesn’t work anymore. A good attitude can’t overcome a lack of skills, and when you’re growing at 100% revenue growth a year, you need the people that will get the job done right away.” – Cameron Herold
With that being said, you shouldn’t stop interviewing either.
It’s an important part of hiring but along with their initial impression –
you also need to look for some “evidence” of good work done by them.
Hire evidence, not the impression.
Most of the time people who are nervous in interviews can be really valuable to your organization.
If you can invest in them by giving a good leadership development program – they can even give you triple-digit ROIs.
Hiring Mistake #2: Not Making The Role & Responsibility Crystal Clear:
Every single person you hire should have a place in your org chart.
They should have a crystal clear role & responsibility.
What are the SOPs they will have to do on a daily, weekly & monthly basis?
What are the KPIs on which their performance will be reviewed?
What are the areas that are going to be their responsibility?
Unless you have a clear answer to these questions, don’t hire.
If your job description is unclear, your applicants will be unclear.
One good hack we found at the COO Alliance is to get a professional copywriter to polish the job description and make it pop.
It always gets a better response than the typical HR-written job description copy and pasted from Google.
Hiring Mistake #3: Rushing to the Decision:
Look I get it – your organization has a new role that needs to be filled ASAP.
Yes, you need to hire fast.
But hiring right is even more important than hiring fast.
Imagine, if you waited for 1 month, went through all the candidates, and finally hired the right one for the role.
You are all set.
You may never have to worry about that particular responsibility anymore.
Yet, if in a hurry, you hire the wrong candidate, 3 months go by.
You have invested time & resources on this new hire – with no luck.
You are back to square one and thousands of dollars down.
So – don’t rush, take your time, and read 100 resumes if that’s what it takes.
Make sure that you find the right person the first time.
You have to be sure they are the BEST candidate, not just a “good’ candidate.
“Take your time. Think about what it’s going to cost in time and money to hire and train someone, only to find that she’s not up to the job. You could end up having to repeat the whole process.” – MindTools
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