Monday Quickie – 10 Reasons Your Company Sucks at Hiring Employees

​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:

1. HBR did a study that found 80% of turnover is due to poor hiring decisions
2. More than 70% of companies don’t have a specific process they follow to ensure their hiring process is streamlined and effective

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. 
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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:

1. Candidates are not respected going through the interview process (this happens all the time and is one of the quickest ways to lose a great candidate; disrespect comes in the form of wasting people’s time, not getting back to people, treating them poorly during the onsite interview, etc.)
2. Hiring managers have unrealistic expectations and make hiring decisions based on being able to perform immediately rather than long term success
3. Hiring managers don’t know what they’re looking for in a candidate so they interview dozens of people hoping to figure it out along the way (this often times is an unspoken action as few people will openly admit to their peers they don’t know what they’re doing)
4. The job description used to search and vet candidates isn’t the same as the real job responsibilities
5. Interviewing is based around job tasks, not the expected performance results
6. The interview process is overly complex and lengthy (it goes on for months on end with weeks of down time in between interviews or discussions, or it involves several interviews with dozens of people)
7. The interview process fails to connect what the company’s story and mission is with a candidates career motivations are (when this happens companies are hiring people to fill a job, not a career)
8. The company’s sole source for hiring is technology (hint – only about 11% of people find their job on the internet so if your strategy is to solely to use technology – job boards, social media - you’re missing out on 89% of the rest of the workforce)
9. The company is reactive, not proactive, in hiring and building out a candidate pool
10. They have entire teams or departments involved the hiring decision (often times those people aren’t trained on how to interview and don’t understand the true needs of the job)

 
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.