If you’ve ever wanted to make a resolution for your company, now’s the time. This year, you should resolve to avoid bad hires. You already know that there is a high cost to a bad hire, not just financially. So, what can you do individually to ensure that your company makes the best possible hire every time? Here are some tips to get you started.
Start With the Job Posting
Like a candidate’s resume is their first impression, your job posting is often the first impression you make on potential employees. They will read your job post online and decide whether they want to apply. That means you have to have a top-quality job description and posting to attract top-quality candidates. What does your post say about your company, the job, and the kind of candidate you want to hire?
Avoid Unconscious Bias
Yes, the very nature of unconscious bias means we don’t often know we’re doing it. But by understanding that it is a natural way to perceive the world, you can actively work against it to avoid making biased decisions. Start by trying to identify your unconscious biases. For example, do you tend to focus on age or gender when making a hiring decision without realizing it? That’s an unconscious bias that could cause you to miss out on great candidates.
Assess Your Interview Process
Your interview process could also lead to bad hiring decisions. To make it fairer to all potential candidates, start by streamlining it and creating a script that you follow with everyone. When your questions are uniform, you will be evaluating each candidate by the same criteria. Also, make sure your process is easy to navigate, or good candidates might avoid it altogether.
Potential or Experience
Finally, you need to look at whether you put more eight on potential or experience in your interviewing process. Would you instead hire someone without a lot of experience, but who has the potential to learn? Or would you instead hire someone who brings the specific expertise to the table and can hit the ground running? There is no one right answer, but how you approach this will affect the productivity of your company.
Do you want to improve your hiring process this year? Contact Harvard Resource Solutions today.
