Top 6 Critical Recruiting Mistakes Managers Should Avoid

Preparing for the recruitment process:

Congratulations! Your company is ready to hire new candidates. You have built your company or recently restructured and now you're ready to hire that top-performing talent. The first thing you need to do is to prepare yourself for the recruiting process.  

The preparation process starts with writing a proper job description, deciding what are the basic skill sets you require and clarifying the competencies that are critical to the culture and values of the organization.

There are a few options available to choose from when it comes to recruitment – you can hire from within the organization (if restructuring), you can tap into your networks, or you can find external sources such as the Internet, LinkedIn, or a headhunting service.

You would like to make sure that you have a clear retention strategy in place because hiring, training, firing, and then looking for new recruits can prove to be very costly. It would be significantly cheaper if you hold on to your employees (O’Meara, & Petzall, 2013).

One major mistake that many managers or recruiters are making is looking or paying too much attention to experience, years on a job no longer means as much as the skills or the character of the individual (something we will explain a little more in this article), but the point being is that recruiters should consider that experience and education on a resume is becoming obsolete. Consider replacing “years of experience” with “ability to problem solve” or “education” with “resourcefulness” – today everything is a YouTube and Google search away (Sullivan, 2000). 

6 Most Critical Mistakes: (No Particular Order)

1. Expecting too much, too soon from a new recruit.

Don’t expect a new recruit to hit the road running. It typically takes about 3 months for a new employee to get used to the organization, understand what is expected from them, and get fully trained. Everyone is different and it takes time to learn what is expected, how the manager “ticks”, and the desired communication style required (MindTools, N.D.). 

2. Looking for a candidate with the right skills and experiences, rather than somebody with the right attitude.

As explained a little bit earlier, too many recruiters traditionally look for people with a rap sheet of skill sets, years of experience, and education. What recruiters are missing out on is a candidate that possibly will be an A-Player that will bring all of themselves to the job. Attitude is much more important than all the experience, skill, and education – because the experience can easily be gained, education and skills learned and earned – but character and attitude are really hard to come by. Those with positive and strong characters are the key to any organization’s success (Huppert, 2017). 

3. Not Casting a Wide Net.

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Look into all your options, ask around your networks, recruiters, LinkedIn, Job Search agencies, etc. A good idea is to also consider a working remotely situation (especially after all that has been going on lately). There are lots of options out there but needs to be open to many possibilities (Turner, 2019).

4. Hiring a Less Qualified Person to Save Money.

Hiring is a difficult process as is, keeping the right candidate is even hiring, do not underestimate the importance of making sure that the person is the right candidate that is qualified and someone that will stay with the organization longer-term (Johnson, 2019).

 5. Falling for Oversellers.

There are many people who oversell themselves, their skills, their education, their abilities, their experiences, etc. Don’t fall for those. Look carefully for honesty, transparency, and a certain amount of healthy eagerness and curiosity (Meytin, 2019).

6. Hiring Solely on a Recommendation.

Many potential candidates will come from your network highly recommended. Even though this article suggested to reach out to your networks, don’t hire them on the spot or feel obligated to hire these candidates only because they came from recommendation. Follow the steps and avoid the mistakes discussed here just the same (Rampton, 2019).

Yermi Kurkus

References:

Huppert, M. (2017) 5 Common Recruiting Mistakes (and How to Avoid Making Them). Retrieved: https://business.linkedin.com/talent-solutions/blog/recruiting-tips/2017/5-common-recruiting-mistakes-and-how-to-avoid-making-them

MindTools (N.D.) How to Avoid Wasting Time and Money When Hiring. Retrieved: https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/10-recruitment-mistakes.htm

O’Meara, B., & Petzall, S. B. (2013). Recruitment and Selection Preparation. In the Handbook of Strategic Recruitment and Selection: A Systems Approach. United Kingdom: Emerald Group Publishing Limited. Retrieved from eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) database in the Touro library.

Recruiter (2019). 13 Common Hiring Mistakes and How to Avoid Them. Recruiter Q&A. Retrieved: https://www.recruiter.com/i/13-common-hiring-mistakes-and-how-to-avoid-them/

Sullivan, J. (2000). Experience: It ain’t what it used to be. Public Personnel Management, 29(4), 511-516. Retrieved from: http://maamodt.asp.radford.edu/PSYC 651/Sullivan article on experience.htm (Take a look and ask yourself if much has changed since 2000).