Ever consider what one bad hire can cost your business?
We welcome you to JobBank USA and hope your job hunting experience
is a pleasant one. We hope you find our resources useful.
August 3, 2009
A recent survey of 400-plus small-business owners found that poor hiring cost many of them upward of $10,000 per hire, according to Glenview, Ill.-based SurePayroll Inc., an online payroll provider.
That's a lot to swallow for any small company, so if you're thinking of rushing into your next hiring decision, think again, experts say.
"More often than not, hiring the wrong person is worse than hiring no person," says Richard Fein, author of "101 Hiring Mistakes Employers Make . . . and How to Avoid Them" and director of undergraduate placement services at the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. "In a company of 10 people, if one person is a lemon, that's 10 percent of your workforce."
So it pays to hire right the first time. With that said, here are a few top hiring mistakes to avoid:
1. Only recruiting when you have an opening: Recruiting is a perpetual process, Fein says. You shouldn't wait until you have an opening to start scrambling for candidates.
As a company, you should be building your name and reputation, so that you're an employer of choice and people will want to refer candidates to you, he notes. An employee referral program can also help.
2. Basing your hiring decision solely on the resume, interview and your instincts: Considering 95 percent of resumes contain some form of exaggeration, you should be doing proper due diligence including reference and background checks (with an applicant's consent), says Grant D. Robinson, president of a personnel management consulting firm in Renton, Wash.
Robert Micera, human resources director for Margolin, Winer & Evens, a Garden City accounting firm, knows the importance of this first hand. "I've rescinded job offers for falsification of education credentials," says Micera, author of "Right to the Point."
In this tight economy, with a surplus of candidates applying for limited jobs, applicants may be more apt to embellish their skills and credentials.
3. Asking the same old interview questions: "Ninety percent of interviewers are asking the same general interview questions," Robinson says.
Ask questions related to whether a person can perform relevant job tasks rather than extraneous ones like "Where do you see yourself in five years?" he says. A better question might be, "describe the last time you had multiple projects to perform and didn't have a manager to bounce questions off of?"
4. Settling for the best of the worst: Many employers need to hastily fill a position and have interviewed so many unqualified candidates that they get a halfway decent candidate and make them an offer, Micera says. It's better in the long run holding out for a better candidate, he notes.
5. Not having a clearly written job description: Recruitment ads need to be clear and accurately describe the job opening, explains Barbara DeMatteo, director of human relations consulting for Portnoy, Messinger, Pearl & Associates, an HR consulting firm in Syosset. "Oftentimes, the job description isn't clearly written, so you're not sourcing the appropriate candidates from the start," she notes.
6. Not coordinating interviews among hiring managers: Optimally, at least two different people should interview a candidate on two different days, at two different times of day to see how consistent they are, DeMatteo suggests. "Ask different sets of questions to identify the applicant's competencies," she suggests.
Email This Page!