If you are one of the 99% of businesses that have recruited a bad hire, pretty much everyone, you would have experienced the trauma of managing this person either to improve or out of the business. It is extremely stressful to the hirer as well as really bad for morale.
Why has virtually everyone made the same mistake and unfortunately for some businesses they keep making the same mistake over and over again? There are many reasons, so I have listed a few common ones below, in the hope that if you are making these mistakes you can rectify them:
- The most common mistake is hiring in a hurry. When this happens corners are cut and candidates don’t go through a rigorous enough process. Interviews are rushed, referees aren’t contacted and then you have a new hire who may not be right for the business.
- Similar to the above is, not following a rigorous process. Research tells us that 35% of bad hires lie on their CV, so if you don’t have ways to check this information you’re in trouble. Undertaking pre-interview screening so you are getting better people to the interview is critical. I’ve listed below my key tips on what to do before an interview as well as afterwards to avoid this happening.
- Choosing the best of a bad bunch. When your recruitment process suffers from the two issues above, it leads to poor candidates being interviewed and invariably one candidate being offered the job. If you lower the bar because you can’t find good people you are setting yourself up for failure.
- Recruiting friends/family and sometimes customers. This can certainly go both ways, but if it goes wrong it’s really bad. If you have to fire the staff member it has a big negative impact for the staff member’s friend/family who stays on. If it’s a customer you’ve hired, they will tell lots of other customers and their friends how bad your business is.
Hiring the wrong person can be a nightmare, particularly, as often happens, this person survives the “trial period.” Once this has occurred it is much harder to terminate and has to be done properly otherwise employers face heavy penalties. The wrong person negatively impacts the business in a number of ways, namely:
- It is so time consuming to manage their performance
- The manager takes their eye of the bigger picture and is badly distracted (and stressed!)
- It lowers staff morale, drives up recruitments costs, increases workloads and it can severely impact productivity – for retailers this is reflected in poor customer service and sales.
Here are my top 5 tips for finding the right staff
- If the current way you advertise for candidates is not working, change it
- Use every interaction to screen the candidate. Prior to the interview assess their phone manner, try and get them in to meet them personally before the interview
- Have a structured interview process with questions written down, two people at the interview and take notes
- Always check referees and you must talk to their current employer or the one before
- Decide if this person can do the job, wants the job and will get along with others in the team.
Roger Simpson – CEO, The Retail Solution and Author of “The Ultimate Retail Sales Experience” With over 35 years’ industry experience, Roger Simpson is recognized as Australia’s #1 Authority on customer ROI in the retail industry and as a global expert on staff coaching, customer service, and selling skills.
