It’s a well-known fact that recruitment can be time consuming and costly. Avoid further headache by learning from the following mistakes that other hiring managers have made in the past.
1. Being unprepared
Failing to give the interview process the time and effort it deserves is, by far, the main reason hiring managers fail to reveal useful information about a person. It's understandable why hiring managers frequently neglect to take the necessary steps to prepare for interviews: They're busy. Everybody's busy.
Skillful interviewers will show up to an interview prepared and with the same method every time, varying questions to suit individual situations.
2. Afraid to Ask Tough Questions
Interviews are awkward for everyone, and it's easy to over-empathize with a nervous candidate. It's also common to throw softball questions at someone whom you like, know or who makes you feel comfortable. You're better off asking everyone the same set of challenging questions—you might be surprised by what they reveal.
3. Bringing interviewer bias
A hiring manager might believe that a prospective candidate who has been referred by a colleague is prequalified and better suited to the position than an unknown. Interviewer bias can also be more subtle — for example, when an employer unconsciously favors an applicant whose first name is the same as her generous, hard-working uncle.
One of the best ways to overcome interviewer bias is to have more than one person interviewing each each candidate. The first interviewer, for example, might be a human resources manager, while the second might be the supervisor the applicant would report to. If a second interview is required, then the company owner or operations manager may conduct it instead.
4. Writing unclear or ineffective job descriptions.
Many hiring managers approach the hiring process feeling like they’ll know the right candidate when they meet them. Interviews are time consuming; you’ll waste a lot of time talking to the wrong people if you don’t take a first step of putting a thorough and accurate job description down on paper.
The job description serves 2 main purposes. First, it tells the candidate what the job will be like and who you are looking for (It will therefore make writing your advertisement for the position easy too!). Second, it forces you to be thoughtful about the attributes someone must have or be willing to develop to be successful in this role.
5. You Cut It Short
A series of interviews can eat up your whole day, so it's tempting to keep them brief. But a quick meeting just doesn't give you enough time to gauge a candidate's responses and behavior. Judging candidates is nuanced work, and it relies on tracking lots of subtle inputs. An interview that runs 45 minutes to an hour increases your chances of getting a meaningful understanding of someone.
The Konnect Koncepts Tip
If you want to avoid falling short when hiring employees, make sure that you are always open-minded during the interview process and have a clear idea of what qualities you're looking for in potential candidates.
Finally, do not be afraid to seek out professional help when it comes to improving your interview process - after all, the quality of the decisions hiring managers make right now, will impact your company and its reputation.
Konnect Koncepts can help you hire and retain employees by handling your entire Recruitment process on your companies behalf or certain parts of it. If you want help in this area please contact us on 09 392 9868 or contact us here.