 Growth in hiring is typically a good thing. Why thank you Captain Obvious. While growth in hiring may very well be a good thing, successfully navigating the hiring process is an entirely different story. Successful hiring can make or break the performance of a company. Unsuccessful hiring on the other hand creates all sorts of fun challenges for folks like you and me. In fact, Harvard Business Review identifies 80% of employee turnover is due to bad hiring decisions. What does this mean? First, let’s look at the potential tangible repercussions. According to Dice, one of the larger online job boards, a poor hiring decision for a candidate earning $100,000 per year could cost, on average, $250,000, and that expense comes right off the bottom line. That’s scary stuff! Basically, if the hiring decision you made ends poorly you can expect that mistake to represent 2.5 times the cost of whatever the salary is of the person you are hired. Rather than fearing the hiring process, or having it work against us, we should approach it with a strategic and open minded process to ensure success. Want to improve your hiring practices? Employee (pun intended) these 15 tips: 1. Why Would Someone Pick You/ Your Company? No longer is it realistic for employers to have the notion that just because you are in the drivers’ seat administering the interview means you have all the power. In fact, it’s quite the opposite as the current market is more in favor of the job seeker as they have plenty of options to choose from, you being one of them. If you want the best of the best you have to be able to speak to WHY people should consider you and your company. Your story must resonate with your interviewees. 2. Character Over Competency The best leaders use this philosophy – hire people who will bleed for your cause and will make the right decisions even in the darkest of hours. Competency in most jobs can be taught, character is what the person has developed well before you came around so don’t think you can change it easily, if at all 3. Behavioral Based Interviewing A great tactic while interviewing is to ask people what they would do in certain situations. This causes people to have to think and adjust in the moment. You aren’t trying to catch someone doing something wrong here, more or less understand their thought process and how they handle certain tasks or situations 4. Know What You Want Before You Interview All too often I hear people say, “we need to interview some people first to better understand who we are looking for”. You should never need to interview someone in order to help you understand who or what you are looking for. If you use this practice most often what it means is you don’t know what you’re doing from a leadership perspective. Tough love I know but it’s highly important you know what you want and need before you go looking for it during interviews. Wasting people’s time so you can figure out your direction with hiring isn’t advisable and it’s unprofessional. 5. Consult Others Before you go about the interview process speak with other managers about their experiences and your plans for your hiring process. The best advice typically comes from those who have been there and done it before that way you can learn from their successes and mistakes 6. Make Sure You Know And Understand Your Vision Somewhat similar to number #1 however this focuses on you and your specific team. Put yourself in the shoes of the person interviewing and think “Why would I want to work for her/ him?” “Does this vision excite me?” “What is my role in the future of this company?” 7. Best Foot Forward A helpful reminder if nothing else, remember when people are interviewing you are witnessing their ideal self, seeing them at their best. Asking questions which will give you better insight into who they are day-to-day, not just during your interview, are always good ways to get a better glimpse into who they are in a very day setting. 8. Tell Them Your Leadership Philosophy This is especially important if you are hiring the person to join your team. This is also very different than #6 which talks about the vision for your team or company. Here you are sharing with your interviewee how you lead and what you believe in. A great precursor question to this is asking the candidate what type of leadership they like and want in their next career 9. Interview Tests It’s a great practice to test candidates on their abilities on the spot, so long as the test is directly relatable to their core job function. If you are interviewing a Mechanical Engineer, for example, it is highly suggested you test them on the exact work they would be doing for you (ie Solidworks modeling) 10. The Reference Trick I personally think references are a waste of time. Why? Because the people on the other end of the phone are doing nothing but singing the praises of the person you are interviewing. In over a decade I can name on one hand the number of reference checks I’ve performed which brought about a poor review. Here’s how to get around it – when you are on the phone with the reference which was provided by your interviewee ask who else the interviewee worked with and then try to phone that person. This person won’t be prepared for your call and may provide you with more realistic insight into the persons’ work ethic and behaviors. 11. Put Yourself In Their Shoes Interviewing isn’t easy. In fact it can be downright terrifying for some people. Try looking beyond the interview. Just because someone’s interview isn’t a glowing success, or they may seem overly nervous, doesn’t mean they aren’t a good catch. Just because someone interviews well doesn’t mean they will perform well in the job. 12. Job Description = Performance Expectations It’s time we ditch the HR job descriptions and actually write and talk about what the newly hired employee will be expected to do from a performance perspective. If you’re hiring for sales, interview your candidates based on the quotas and metrics you’ll have in place. Ask how they will achieve those goals, what their strategies will be, etc. 13. Know Your Non-Negotiables What are you not willing to tolerate? When I’m in a position of hiring my two non-negotiables are attitude and integrity because both of these are things we have 100% control over. Knowing that I then ask questions around those two to see how they view my perspective on my non-negotiables. Asking interviewees their non-negotiables will also give you an idea of where their priorities land 14. Challenge Your Own Mindset One of the most common mistakes leaders make when hiring is they select candidates that remind them of themselves or select candidates that are beneath them skill wise. Great leaders surround themselves with people who are not only competent but will challenge the leader to be better. 15. Don’t Hire If It Isn’t What You Want I hired an employee that was most of what I was looking for but through the interview I uncovered some things that were less than great. Up to this point I had interviewed so many people that I just decided to move forward with this particular candidate and did the whole ‘cross your fingers’ bit in hopes they would work out. From that experience I can tell you it is always better to not hire when in doubt than hire because you need to fill a spot. 
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 After more than a decade of hiring people on a daily basis I’ve seen a thing or two when it comes to good vs. bad practices relating to the process of hiring employees. During that time I’ve also made my fair share of mistakes in the people I’ve hired which offered up a plethora of learning opportunities. What I've learned over the years is that making a hiring mistake can be costly and most of the time it is the employers fault the hire doesn’t work out, not the new hire themselves. Hiring an employee is an interesting and vital part of business. Interesting in that the end result is bringing on a new person into your company with the idea that they will fulfill a role to help the company move forward. Vital, because hiring really is one of the most important activities a business can do outside of generating revenue. Without revenue streaming in there is no need for hiring and no company for that matter, which is why I’ve placed generating revenue a tier above hiring. The act of hiring is often whimsical and mythical in nature, like a unicorn. Everyone loves to say they’re great at interviewing as they enjoy saying “I know how to pick em”, or “I’m able to sniff out the best from the worst in five minutes”. I always enjoy a good chuckle when I hear comments like this because the reality is that these words often stand on hollow ground. While we love to think we’re great at the process of identifying, vetting and selecting the best people the facts tell a different story:
With stats like this you’d think companies would focus more on their hiring process and approach to improve this area of the business similarly to how they spend endless amounts of time and money on activities like kaizen events and lean initiatives in order to improve yields by a couple percentage points. In the end the numbers don’t lie as they tell us a sobering story – no one is perfect when it comes to hiring employees. However the quicker we build awareness around our actual performance in the area of hiring the quicker we can begin to improve it. Below are the ten (10) most common hiring mistakes made in business. As you read through these make a note of how frequent an offender you or your company is with each:
Key Take Away: The current job market is one of the most competitive hiring landscapes we’ve ever seen. Most of the people in the US workforce have never seen unemployment figures like we’re experiencing today. Orange County, CA unemployment rate in September 2019 was a staggering 2.9%. Meaning, 97.1% of people who are eligible and or able to work are in fact doing so. The numbers nationally don’t get much better, or in favor of the employer, as we’re experiencing 3.5% unemployment nationally. The last time the unemployment rate was this low was in 1969. What does this all mean – it’s a candidates market, not an employers market. Most, if not all, the good people and therefore candidates are gainfully employed. If you want to improve your chances of landing great employees to help grow your company you need to ensure your hiring practices are addressing and or solving the 10 hiring issues mentioned above. Action Item: If you or your company struggle to hire great people one of the best things you can do to correct it is to seek advice and an alternate viewpoint. Ask your employees why they were for your company, learn what matters to them most and why they stick around. Another way to gain insight is to bring in an HR or recruiting consultant to review your current processes. Outsiders can often times see things quicker and easier than you can as they aren’t coming from a lens that is within the company. Their outsider perspective can provide unbiased feedback on the things you need to do to attract better talent.  
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