The employer’s job is no easy task, from the initial development and application of a sourcing strategy to the review of perhaps thousands of resumes, from conducting numerous interviews and assessments to making a final decision and negotiating the job offer. Unfortunately, in all of these complex and complicated processes there is a good deal of room for error on the employer’s part, little areas in which it is all too common for employers to make the same mistakes again and again, mistakes which can end up leading to a bad hire which will only cost the company untold losses and mean starting the process all over again from the beginning. However, if they are to avoid making these same mistakes time and again employers will first need to learn to identify these errors and from there learn to what steps must be taken to prevent them.
So to help guide employers as they work to identify these problems and their solutions, here is a look at a few common recruiting mistakes as they have been outlined by the hiring professionals at executive search firms.
The first mistake that so many employers make comes in the earliest stage of the hiring process. The job description is perhaps the most important part of the entire hiring process as, through the description the employ provides, will help to guide the kind and quality of the applicants they will receive. Unfortunately too many employers have a tendency to be far too vague in the information they provide. The thing that more employers need to understand is that there is a balance that must be struck in the writing of this document. While the job description should paint an incredibly thorough portrait of the role, the duties and responsibilities it entails as well as an outline of the knowledge and skills believed necessary to fill it, a well-developed job description should also function to begin selling the role and the company to the reader by providing information about the compensation and benefits that can be expected as information about the company and its goals and culture.
When it comes to overseeing and making the final decision in the executive search and hiring processes far too many companies are all too willing to allow the entirety of these responsibilities to be handled by their human resources departments. However, if they are to be as thorough as they should, and if they are to find the perfect fit for the role, individuals from the department or team into which this new employee will be fitting should play a much more active role. The fact stands that, as much as they may know about the hiring process, those in HR can only really know so much about what it takes to make a good fit. In order to find an individual who not only meets the needs of the role based on their skills and knowledge but also meshes with the culture and preexisting team or departmental framework, those within the team or department in question must step up, particularly in the interview process, to help better assess candidates and determine if they will have what it takes to succeed here.
Published by Conselium Executive Search, the global leader in compliance search.
