Is Your Hiring Process Getting the Attention It Deserves?
Posted By: Daniela Tancau
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Is Your Hiring Process Getting the Attention It Deserves?
The hiring process is a series of steps designed to recruit and select candidates for a specific job position. It starts with clarifying the role of the future employee and the skills, competencies, and qualities this person should have. It then continues with establishing the methods and instruments that will be used to recruit people who match the job profile, gather information about them, and test their competencies when necessary.
All steps are important, and the success of hiring depends on how well this process is designed and conducted.
It’s like an instrument itself. If, for example, you have a low-quality phone, you won’t be able to take high-resolution pictures or videos. You may often become annoyed by how complicated it is to do certain things on the phone, and the overall experience with that phone will not be satisfying. If the phone components are low quality, its functionalities and features will work poorly. You can’t expect to hire great people for your company if the instrument you use doesn’t have the necessary components to achieve that.
My intention in this blog post is to give you some reference points on how you can improve the hiring process and get your attention on:
- The candidates’ motivation for the jobs they applied for, because this is the number one factor that impacts employee engagement, performance, and retention. Sometimes, companies don’t gather information about this, and as a consequence, they risk making poor hiring decisions.
- The reasons that might cause you or your team members to leave out critical information in the hiring process.
- The consequences of poor hires
- What can happen when you hire people just because you or someone in the company knows them
1. Do you Strive to Know the Candidates' Professional Interests and Goals?
When employers take the time to find out a job candidate’s professional expectations, interests, and goals, they can determine if that candidate will be satisfied with what will be offered to him/her if they are hired. And then, it’s important to actually consider what you have learned about the candidate in the hiring process.
The irony of things is that when you are genuinely interested in what the candidate wants from a future job, not only in terms of money but also in terms of work environment and conditions, the type of leadership they accept and prefer, the work values and standards they are used to and expect, the growth opportunities they are looking for, and so on, you have great chances to make the best hiring decisions.
This is because when you know what a candidate wants and, equally importantly, you are honest in your appreciation of whether those expectations can be met in your company, you are able to choose those candidates whose expectations can be met in your company. So these are the individuals who have great chances of being satisfied by what you can offer them.
If employees are satisfied with their jobs, they will engage more and, as a natural consequence, their results will be better. You can rely on them because they like what they do and strive to obtain great results.
Maybe you are thinking that the candidates have also the responsibility to choose jobs they like. You are right. However, if they make the wrong decisions for them you’ll pay too, probably even more than them because this impacts your entire team.
2. Why Critical Information Might be Left Out in the Hiring Process
It seems that sometimes critical information is left out. This may happen because the people involved in the hiring process don’t realize how these factors will impact the future employee’s behaviour and retention in the company. Maybe they are desperate to hire someone and are willing to overlook important aspects. Or, they might base their decisions on incorrect, insufficient, or non-essential criteria.
When the hiring people don't know which information is important
You don’t know what you don’t know, right? Human resources is a field that requires specialized learning.
You can’t be great at hiring people solely due to experience, just as you can’t be great solely due to your knowledge – although knowledge might be more important. A person can have experience in hiring people, but that doesn’t guarantee good hiring decisions. On the other hand, someone with little hiring experience but excellent human resources knowledge is more likely to make great hiring decisions because that person knows what to look for in a hiring process.
Unfortunately, because of a lack of knowledge about the human resources field, some companies hire individuals for human resources roles who have little or no education or training in this area. While these individuals can be wonderful people, without proper support to acquire the necessary skills and competencies, they will not perform well and their inputs will not be valuable for the company.
To be able to set the selection criteria correctly, choose the tools that measure the candidates’ skills and competencies, create the interview guide, communicate professionally with candidates throughout the selection process, and evaluate them – all of these require specialized knowledge and training.
Small poll of candidates
A company can lower its standards during the hiring process when it doesn’t find suitable candidates. Although they can do this to some extent, in some cases, the costs can be major.
If the issue is the skills, then this might be fixed through training and/or mentorship. However, if the new employees don’t have a foundation that allows them to understand or learn the missing skills, and the willingness to learn and develop, this issue will not be solved.
Another possible situation that will not end up successfully is when you know that the candidate wants something else from a job but is willing to accept the job offer because of temporary circumstances, and you hire him/her because you don’t find somebody else or you are not willing to spend more time looking for somebody else. Even if that person stays in your company for a long period, the job doesn’t bring him/her satisfaction. Usually, unsatisfied employees will not engage fully in their work.
Lack of time
Maybe you need to fill a job position immediately and don’t have time to look for other candidates.
But you’ll lose even more time by hiring the wrong person. If the new employee is not a good fit, he/she may leave in the first days or weeks, during the probation period or later. You may lose a lot of time training and integrating this new employee, and then he/she leaves shortly, leaving you with the same problem after you have invested in him/her with little return.
Wrong selection criteria
For example, hiring based only on attitude, sympathy, or simply because the candidate is known by someone in the company, will not lead to success.
Only when selection criteria are relevant to the job positions offered and to the company’s culture, and when these criteria are objectively measured for all candidates, the company can choose individuals who are a good fit for both the jobs and the company.
For example, you can have a candidate with an excellent attitude whom you find sympathetic, but if you don’t test this candidate, you won’t know if he has the necessary skills for the job. Simultaneously, even if the candidate has a good attitude and obtains high scores on the tests, if that candidate finds the job tasks too easy or has had more complex responsibilities in the past, it is less likely that he will be motivated by the job. The job might be perceived as a professional regression.
3. The Consequences of Poor Hires
Lack of satisfaction with job responsibilities, leadership practices, the work environment, the company’s culture, or other aspects of an employee’s experience will affect his/her engagement to varying degrees. This may impact the employee’s performance and the attitudes and morale of other employees. That’s why it’s so important to take into consideration these aspects in the hiring process.
You’ll need to manage poor engagement and performance and fill the empty positions. These may be constant issues in a company, but the levels at which they are encountered make the difference between companies that have a good employer brand and are able to deliver great services or products and those companies that are not able to achieve these results.
You can find detailed information about the consequences of poor hires in my free training: ”How To Hire Candidates Motivated By Your Job Offers”
4. What Can Happen When you Hire People Just Because You Know Them
People in hiring positions and employers might be approached for job opportunities by their acquaintances or friends. And not only them. Every employee of a company can be approached with this goal in mind.
There’s nothing wrong with asking for job opportunities. It’s a common practice to offer bonuses to those who refer someone new to the company. However, these situations can have negative effects on a company if it hires them for the wrong reasons.
If they go through the same hiring process as every other candidate and succeed in passing all the selection steps, then they are good to go further and get hired. It’s a win-win situation.
But if they get the job without achieving the expected results and without meeting the job requirements, then you are in a lose-lose situation.
What often happens is that it is harder to give a negative answer to a person you know than to a simple candidate who is a stranger, or to a person who is an acquaintance of an important member of the company. This might make some people more tolerant or flexible with these candidates. But we get to choose our hard, right? If the hard but right thing is not done at this moment, then other difficult situations will occur.
Impact on the company's resources
That person will not manage to perform well in the job, even if his/her intentions are good and is trying to do a good job. That person will struggle in the job, and he/she will not be happy with it. This situation will translate into losses for your company. Poor results can mean loss of material resources, time, and money spent on a person who doesn’t add value to your company.
Impact on other team members
Oftentimes, this person has to be helped by other team members, which means additional costs for the company. If the other teammates are not willing to help, this situation will dissatisfy them.
You can compensate them for helping the new employee. They shouldn’t have to pay for a poor hire. Unfortunately, this is what happens in these cases. The other employees have to cover the work that is not done by this employee, or they have to repair this person’s mistakes. Not only do they have to work more, but their levels of stress and dissatisfaction will increase. It is like a ripple effect.
In large organizations, these kinds of situations may be even worse because the top management might not be aware of them. These issues can go unnoticed and never be addressed or corrected. The employees may feel even more disappointed and powerless. The support they give is not recognized and impacts their own contribution and performance.
Impact on the company brand and culture
Also, the company’s standards and values will suffer. By hiring a person who doesn’t have the necessary qualities for the job or is not fit for it, the management sends the message that some people can obtain a position without being qualified for it, fit for it, and without contributing.
Some team members have to work hard to obtain certain positions and responsibilities while others don’t. This creates an unfair hiring system, different work standards, a lack of trust in the decisions made by the leaders, disengagement, and higher employee turnover rates.
Conclusion
To make successful decisions, pay attention to all the steps of the hiring process and acknowledge what you don’t know. Enhance your skills or seek support from those with the expertise you need. Invest more time in crafting and conducting the hiring process to reduce the time spent managing employees and to have a motivated team.
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Posted By: Daniela Tancau
Daniela Tancau is an HR consultant, trainer, coach, and founder of Improve Work company. She has over fifteen years of experience in the human resources field. Her expertise lies primarily in online programs and courses aimed to increase employee motivation, develop team leadership skills, employee communication, and much more.
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