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RISKVUE ARCHIVE | INDUSTRY WATCH > EMPLOYMENT PRACTICES LIABILITY (EPL)
The 10 Biggest Mistakes Made In Hiring
If workers are carefully selected, the problems of discipline will be negligible.
— Johnson & Johnson Co. Employee Relations Manual, 1932
Employee turnover, wrongful hiring, sexual harassment, violence in the workplace, employee theft ... the list goes on. A lot can go wrong when you hire the wrong person! The wrong person is underqualified, litigious, controlling, insubordinate and detrimental to an entire organization. The seeds of many a failure are planted in the hiring process.
We would like to share with you some of the common mistakes we see companies making. It makes no difference whether the company is large or small, whether they are hiring a janitor or executive. We’ve seen a convalescent home unknowingly hire a violent felon as a janitor who kidnapped, raped and then killed one of the patients. We’ve seen companies hire multimillion-dollar executives - and that’s not what they cost the companies in salary but how much damage they did. Don’t make the same mistakes these companies did!
1. The Failure to Identify Company Needs
When searching for a job candidate, your company has to clearly define what it is you are looking for in terms of skills, character and competency. What objective standards must they meet, what education should they have, what should their prior work experience be and what technology should they be able to master? What are the short- and long-term needs going to be? How will this affect the hiring decision? Many times a company’s needs can be more efficiently met through outsourcing or strategic partnering. Don’t just assume you need a certain type of employee. Test your assumptions. Begin your breakthrough management thinking with the hiring process.
2. The Failure to Test Their Skills
Skills testing are a must. Every job has some form of objective standard. Identify it and test for it. There is a great deal of difference between a secretary who types 60 words per minute with mistakes and one who types 80 words per minute without any. Unless you test an applicant’s skills, you're taking a gamble that they can perform. It’s a bet you just may lose.
3. Hiring out of Desperation
Many times hiring decisions are made out of desperation. Your secretary quits and you need someone to replace him or her now. Your company is growing so fast that you'll just throw in the bodies and worry about them later. It’s so hard to find programmers that anyone will do. Because of desperation, we've all had situations where we brought someone into a relationship who we later found out couldn’t be trusted. Don’t fall prey to fear-based hiring. Again, think of alternatives. If you can’t go through a hiring process in a timely manner, then hire a temporary or leased employee. Borrow an employee from another company. Don’t hire in haste — you may end up with waste.
4. We Are Lazy
That’s right, we get lazy. Most of us don’t want to have to “deal with” going through the hiring process. After all, we have jobs to do. Employers have to fight this very human tendency to want do less rather than more. Managers who are desperate or lazy typically take the first person that walks through the door. If you don’t want do go through the process, then hire somebody else to do it for you!
5. Watch Out for Infatuation
A series of surveys reveal that during the interview process, most interviewers made the hiring decision within the first 10 minutes of the interview, and then spent the next 50 minutes justifying the decision. We buy cars the same way. We know the car we want to buy from an emotional standpoint, and then search for objective data do justify the emotional decision. We all know that “facts tell, but emotions sell.” Remember that the best con artists attract infatuation. Just because someone “looks” right for the role does not mean they will be. You can guard against this by having co-interviews, follow-up meetings, and co-employee interviews.
6. There’s Some Baggage That Gets in the Way
Everyone has some baggage somewhere. For some of us, the baggage is the belief that a woman can’t operate a forklift, a man cannot be a nurse, or a minority cannot be an executive. This baggage has nothing to do with reality. Orchestras were traditionally dominated by men. To remove any preconception about what makes a better musician from the hiring process, orchestras began to engage in “blind auditions” where a curtain is literally placed in front of the performers. As a result of these blind auditions, women started being hired at twice the rate, as before — based on the quality of their sound, not the way they look. The fact is the best and brightest are not going to always look and act the way you think they should! Seeking out diversity is not just important to placate the EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission). It’s an absolute necessity in today’s competitive economy.
7. They Were Recommended by a Friend
Just because someone thinks somebody they know is a great worker, that doesn’t mean they are. Perhaps they were just in the right place at the right time. We have seen many occasions where a person was hired without going through a hiring process simply because they were recommended by someone else. Don’t let someone else make your hiring decision for you. Go through a process with anyone who comes into your organization.
8. Blindly Promoting From Within
We are firm believers in looking to promote your own people. But sometimes your best person isn’t necessarily the best person for the job. This happens particularly in promotion to the management level. Just because someone is good at performing a particular service, does not mean they are good at managing other people. We have seen many a career go downhill after a supposed promotion. Make sure your company goes through a complete hiring analysis when making promotions. Promoting solely from within can create inbreeding and stagnation. You should fill at least one-third of your new positions from the outside.
9. The Failure to Do Extensive Background and Reference Checking
If it’s out there in the street, it’s in the workplace. We are often asked to investigate a claim of harassment, theft, threatened violence, or other workplace misconduct. As part of our investigation, we always review the employee file and look to find out what form of background investigation was done on the offending employee. Not surprisingly, there is usually little or no background information collected. Employees with drug problems are never drug tested prior do hire. Security guards that conspire against their employer are never checked for criminal records. Intoxicated drivers behind 18-wheelers never have their driving records checked. Employees who engaged in wrongful conduct at previous places of employment never had their prior employer contacted. Many employers are spooked away from engaging in extensive background investigations because of their concern for EEOC and legislative privacy guidelines. Don’t be. Poor hiring decisions are not caused by barring EEOC-prohibited questions. They are caused by forgetting to ask all those other questions.
10. The Failure to Recognize You Have Made a Poor Hiring Decision
Many companies will realize they have made a fatal hiring mistake within the first three months of the employment relationship, yet they don’t terminate the employee. You must fire poorly performing employees! If you make a poor hiring decision, then do your best to keep that person on his or her feet. This means that you put such employees in at least the same position that you found them. Try to help them with outplacement assistance, and a small severance package, so you don’t end up with a bitter ex-employee or, even worse, a lawsuit.
Conclusion
When you get the chance sometime, go back and look at some of your turnover and poor performance problems. Ask, “How did we hire this person? What process did we go through? Did we make any of the mistakes outlined above?” Remember, if you want to hire the right employee, you have to go through a systemic process that allows you to do so. When you hire the best, you will have high productivity, loyalty, innovation, team players and a healthy bottom line. 
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Copyright © 2003 www.employeradvisorsnetwork.com, inc. Reprinted with permission.
riskVue | The webzine for risk management profesionals
January 2003
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