Avoid Bad Hires

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the average cost for each bad hire can equal 30% of that individual’s annual pay.

Business is booming and you need to expand your workforce immediately, congrats! But with this rush to find personnel comes an increased risk of insufficiently vetting applicants, and results in bad hires.

For a variety of reasons, sometimes new hires don’t quite work out as anticipated: inadequate skill-set, unmotivated, or have a challenging personality. As a result, your organization can be affected in several ways such as monetary (onboarding expenses), time (interviews and training), employee morale (hurting company culture), and loss of business (unsatisfied clients). These incompetence’s quickly cause a collateral effect across the company bringing about far more harm than what would have been just an empty seat.

With an estimated 41% of applicants admitting to have lied in an interview, and 39% submitting “exaggerated” resumes, it may seem like preventing a bad hire is out of your control. But there’s hope, and it begins with a thorough pre-hire assessment. By implementing a bullet proof screening process, you can drastically mitigate the risk of hiring a lemon. Below are some areas to note that will help to prevent your company from suffering the consequences of a bad hire:

1. Put together well thought out and detailed job descriptions. By effectively conveying the position details and candidate requirements will do wonders to attract the right talent.

2. Ensure that new employees are the right fit by making a point to discuss the office culture and what qualities are expected from each employee.

3. Have the applicant ask you questions during the interview to give you a sense of what’s really important to them. If their questions are self-serving in nature – salary, promotion timeline, benefits, etc. – that could be a red flag. Instead, look for individuals who display genuine interest in the company, the people, and being part of driving the organization to success. These folks will ask you more team oriented questions such as how their role will help the company succeed.

With a comprehensive and well executed interview process, you will successfully vet talent and safeguard your team from selecting a bad hire.