bad hire – Resource Center

Your candidate is NOT a match

admin — Fri, 06 Apr 2018 12:33:23 +0000

A hiring manager’s worst nightmare is bringing in the wrong person for the job. There’s cold comfort knowing that it happens often in business, but that doesn’t excuse the hiring manager from responsibility.

So, what do you do in these situations and how do you work on preventing it in the future? Here are some suggestions.

Why Do Bad Hires Happen?
The first is a bad hiring process. Recruitment systems have to be tuned to draw the right candidates for the right job, but current recruiting systems (especially resume scanning systems) can create a lot of false positive matches. Such systems are easy to game. This means humans do need to review resumes.

It also means that job postings must make sense. A well-known complaint in IT is a job posting that asks for five years of experience in a technology that’s only been out for two. Silly mistakes like these are unprofessional and invite people to game the system by dangling out lies about how they match impossible requirements.

This leads to the second reason, bad communication. Recruitment teams absolutely must communicate with managers about the real necessities of the job. Making any sort of assumptions about the technologies, skills, and education necessary without managerial input is a royal road to bad hires. HR must also know enough about the specifics of these requirements to judge hires in interviews, or bring in whoever the direct report will be for the candidate into the interview so they can weigh in.

A bad reputation (reason three) can also be an underlying problem, though this usually stems from bad communication. For instance, the candidate’s assumptions about a job might not match the reality of it and create a bad hire because of the mismatch. Alternatively, a division in the business might have friction with HR or a particular recruiter due to a personality conflict or a history of bad hires.

The Earlier The Better
The sooner you can identify a bad hire, the better. The trouble is that there are many reasons a candidate might be bad. We’ll set aside HR violations in this article and focus on job performance issues.

The first thing is to identify the problem hire. This can only be done through regular communications with managers, especially in the first year of a hire. HR professionals aren’t psychic, and a manager might want to keep a likable but incompetent hire around due to a workplace friendship. Managers must put the health of the business over their workplace relationships, and a regular checkup can help them keep that in mind.

The sooner you can identify, the better, preferably within the first three months. But the only way to catch a bad hire that soon is to communicate regularly with managers about new hires.

Staying Accountable
It’s only natural to want to shift the blame to others on the team. Perhaps it was the applicant’s fault that they weren’t completely honest with you. Perhaps there was a disconnect between the hiring manager and the manager of the department. Whatever the issue was, you’re ultimately the one responsible for the bad hire. And for that, it’s necessary to take ownership.

The best managers in the world are the ones who are able to take responsibility for their actions and take measures to prevent mistakes from happening again. Mistakes happen, but it’s the recovery that will make you shine.

After you’ve acknowledged a bad hire was made, it’s time to go into recovery mode. How do you fix the error that was made? You’ve got several options.

Remove the Bad Hire
It’s obvious that the person isn’t working out for your company’s needs in the position that you hired the person for. Removing them outright from the company may be the best option. Try not to let the time and money invested in the person overshadow the debilitating effects that the person may have on your bottom line.

Retask the Bad Hire
Everyone has strengths and weaknesses, and sometimes the weaknesses may show up in the position that the person was hired for. That’s okay. It happens. If the person has a good attitude and is eager to learn, retasking them for a different but related position might be the better option than removing them outright.

Interview the Bad Hire
Make it important to get good, quality feedback from the person and rely on communication to give you insights into why the bad hire was made in the first place. Are the problems that you’re having systemic, or are they with the person? A good exit interview will clear the air and pave the way for clarifying and refining your hiring processes. The idea here is that even when you make a mistake, you should take measures to avoid having the mistake happen again.

Hiring badly can cost employers thousands of dollars, in the salary, training, and retraining that’s necessary after it’s been made. Fortunately, mistakes can be recovered from and made things of the past. While nothing can truly remove all of the bitterness that a bad hire leaves, it is possible to recover.

The post Your candidate is NOT a match appeared first on Resource Center.

The Terrible Technical Interview: 6 Examples

admin — Thu, 10 Nov 2016 14:22:10 +0000

There are good interview practices and there are bad interview practices. Good interview practices lead to the hiring of the right person for the right job. Bad interview practices lead to terrible hiring decisions.

In the case of tech, the result of a bad hire is staggering. There are financial reasons. SHRM has estimated that the cost of a bad hire could be as high as five times the amount of the bad hire’s salary. Assuming an average IT salary of $100,000, the cost could be $500,000 per bad hire. terrible technical interview

There is the loss of morale and productivity that comes with a bad hire.
And missing out on that exceptional candidate who should have been hired in the first place.

The following six examples illustrate pitfalls that can occur during the technical interview process – and some tips to avoid them.

Overemphasizing the Importance of Certifications and Credentials.

A recruiting manager hired an IT candidate primarily because of the individual’s Project Management Professional (PMP) certification while ignoring another candidate with ten years more experience but without the PMP certification. Things didn’t work out. terrible technical interview

Lesson learned? Don’t outright reject applicants, and discount their experience and accomplishments, just because they don’t have the right degree or certification.

Not Using Proper Interviewing Technology

During an interview on Skype, the interviewer wrote some programming code on a whiteboard and asked the engineering candidate to provide feedback. Problem was, the candidate couldn’t see the whiteboard so the interviewer clumsily tried to reposition their webcam to point at the whiteboard. The technical job candidate was not impressed.

Lesson learned? This could have easily been avoided by using video interviewing technologies, like collaborative whiteboards, to improve the interview and avoid a candidate experience train wreck.

Putting Non Technical Individuals In Charge of Screening Technical Candidates

Insulted by a recruiter’s ill informed questions, an IT candidate suggested they would prefer being interviewed by someone who understands IT and could ask more challenging questions. A little arrogant? Possibly, but not having the right interviewer can prevent you from hiring the best candidate.

Lesson Learned? If your recruiters don’t have the technical experience and knowledge to screen candidates for technical positions, consider outsourcing your technical interviews to a company with the technical know-how, like eTeki.

Ignoring Your Gut

After just one phone interview and no in-person meeting, John was hired. Almost immediately, the team realized a terrible decision had been made. The interviewer, in retrospect, realized he ignored warning signs during the interview process in his haste to fill the job.

Lesson Learned? Research shows that hiring on ‘gut’ instincts alone results in a high hiring failure rate. And there is the potential for unfair bias. But never ignore your instincts. Be aware and curious of your hunches. It usually means that you need to do more due diligence.

Trying to Get More Experience for Less Money

A hiring manager found a highly qualified candidate for an open software development position but the candidate’s salary expectations were slightly higher that what the hiring manager wanted to pay. So the hiring manager continued interviewing candidates – and lost the best applicant.

Lesson Learned? Don’t fall victim to the Fear of Missing Out syndrome (FoMO). Holding out to find a better candidate for a little less money rarely works. Don’t let a few dollars come between your technical job opening and the best candidate. Pay them.

Overwhelming The Candidate

After a candidate for a highly technical position got past an initial screening by a recruiter, a major bank scheduled a phone interview with the candidate to assess culture fit. After phoning in for the interview, the candidate was greeted by seven panelists!

Lesson Learned? Too many meetings, too many interviewers in one meeting, not enough breaks in between meetings. Don’t overwhelm candidates. The best applicants are likely to walk or won’t be given the opportunity to showcase their skills. terrible technical interview

Conclusion: Don’t Make These Interviewing Mistakes

To avoid these scary situations and others, consider outsourcing your technical interviews to service providers such as eTeki. They will schedule candidates for interviews within 24 hours with external IT pros who are certified in technical interviewing. These interviewers use best practices so candidates’ skills are appropriately compared and compliance is ensured.

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