Mistakes are costly in the business world, especially when it comes to hiring. Hiring the wrong person results in re-allocation of human resources to cover the gap, time spent repeating the hiring process, and delays caused by training and learning curves.
Creating a great company culture will ensure continued success as your business matures and expands. Here are the common hiring mistakes to avoid when working toward fostering a great company culture.
Basing Decisions on a Resume
A resume is a great way to see someone’s work history, education, and additional skills and training. However, it falls short when it comes to assessing the whole person. A resume doesn’t speak to enthusiasm for a role or potential. It fails to capture if that person has the perfect personality to fit in your organization. Resumes can also result in unconscious biases against a person. Seeing a gap in employment or that someone doesn’t currently have a job can bring forth a lot of questions surrounding their reliability and competence. In many cases, people have what it takes to succeed but fell on hard times or took time to raise a family. This doesn’t diminish their skills, but can be perceived as such.
Not Assessing Their Work Style
An employee is more than just the hours you calculate at OnTheClock.com to put together their paycheck. Different people have different work styles that may or may not work with your organization.
For example, if you have someone who is extremely serious and dislikes office banter, they won’t fit into an organization that has adopted the work hard, play hard mentality. On the other hand, if the person you are interviewing refuses to take work home with them, they may not fit into an organization that has a flexible approach to hours.
Not Conducting Skills Tests
Circling back to focusing on resumes, the words used are often subjective to the person creating the document. Your version of “adept at Excel” and their version might be completely different. That’s why it is important to conduct skills testing during the hiring process to aid with the selection. On the plus side, you may find a potential employee who drastically undersold their skills on their resume but proves to be a valuable asset to your team.
Skills testing is also a great way to discover skills that the candidate hadn’t included because they hadn’t found it relevant.
Not Trusting Your Gut
Sometimes you meet a candidate who interviews well and is great on paper, but something just doesn’t sit right when you screen them. Perhaps it’s a worry that they are hiding something or that they won’t fit in. One way to combat this feeling is to ensure you do your due diligence when it comes to reference checks. Too many hiring managers fail to check references and live to regret it.
If something seems off, flag it and talk to your team. It could be something unrelated that is bothering you subconsciously, or your discomfort could have merit. Discuss the issue with your team members in the selection process and see if they have any similar misgivings.
The key to building a lasting workplace culture is to ensure you are hiring the right person for the right job. They must be in congruence with your company’s values for ensured success.