Three Keys to Make Better Hiring Decisions Now

A bad hire can kill productivity and morale and really set your organization back. Co-workers may come to feel resentful of a colleague who can’t do the job properly. Restarting the hiring process from replacing that bad hire is also a drain on productivity and adds to hiring costs. It can take months to really get back to speed after a bad hire.

Replacing a bad hire could cost your business tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, between recruitment, relocation and training fees for the new employee, plus the disruption the increased turnover causes within your team and with your business. Fortunately, a great recruiting partner can help to significantly reduce the risk of a bad hire. Here’s how.

Checking Performance With Past Supervisors

An important predictor of how someone will do on the job is how they have performed in previous jobs. As a result, it’s important to check the references of potential hires. All too often, reference checking is not thorough, or in many cases not completed at all by busy employers.

An experienced recruiting partner will know how to elicit detailed information from past supervisors. Asking open-ended questions about employees’ performance will deliver the best results. “Describe a time the candidate showed initiative,” can yield a more detailed information than “did the candidate ever show initiative?”

It’s also important to ask about multiple facets of job performance. Qualifications and experience are important, but so are softer skills, such as time management and the ability to get along with colleagues.

Screening and Testing

Screening resumes to find the candidates with the necessary skills is just the start of finding the right candidate. How much time is your team currently investing in skills testing, interview assessments and role-playing experiences to see how a candidate might perform on the job?

Building deeper assessment experiences during the interview process adds an additional layer of information to consider beyond the question-and-answer portion of the interview. Hard skill tests, behavioral assessments and personality tests are all examples of additional assessments to consider.

Hire For Your Needs

What can employers do to ensure they are focused on their business needs when filling a specific role? Start by assessing the job’s role in the company and the tasks the successful candidate will need to perform, and then make sure your job description is tailored to those needs. Don’t copy job descriptions – each position fills a unique opening for your company and will likely require unique skill sets.

Make sure your jobs are being found by the people who will become the best candidates. Marketing your open positions on job boards may yield a higher quantity of applicants, but you may find more qualified candidates for positions that are tougher to fill by working with local trade associations, attending career fairs or posting on specialized industry sites.

Attracting top employees can be tough in this market. The Applied Companies’ staffing team in northern Nevada can help assist you with better hiring decisions with an extensive network and a broad reach. Contact us today to start your search for better candidates.