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The unnecessary costs associated with making a bad hire have been well-documented, and making the wrong hiring decision is something every employer tries to avoid.

Yet bad hiring decisions happen all the time. Clearly, avoiding a bad hire is a difficult thing to do. Hiring managers need to take deliberate steps to sniff out potential bad hires and eliminate them from a hiring process. Consider the following tips on how to do just that.

Standardize your process

According to research, companies that lack a standard process are five times more likely to make a bad hire than firms with a standard process.

Clarify what should be covered at each stage of the process: screening interviews, first interviews, second interviews, peer interviews, and final interviews. Providing interviewers with a checklist of questions helps improve consistency and outcomes.

Standardization can also minimize bias, a major issue that can infect even the most well-intended of hiring processes.

Analyze past hiring decisions

Depending on the size of your company, you may have quite a bit of experience making hiring decisions.

Let this experience guide you as you decide what to do next. For example, if you’ve made certain mistakes in the past, do your best to avoid these in the future. Just the same, stick with the processes that have worked in your favor.

You can learn a lot about avoiding bad hires by simply reviewing what you have done in the past.

Use background checks

It doesn’t matter what kind of business you have or what industry you’re in, it’s crucial to perform background checks on all applicants. With this system, you can rapidly eliminate applicants who don’t fit precisely what you are trying to find in an employee.

There are numerous concerns related to background checks, so ensure you implement a system that is standardized and adheres to all legal guidelines.

Use multiple interviewers

Having multiple people sit in on interviews can bring different perspectives to the candidate assessment process. People from different backgrounds will pick up on different things, and someone else may recognize a factor you happen to miss.

Another approach is to have another person conduct a second interview on their own. Using this method, you can compare notes and get a clearer concept of which applicants you like and dislike.

While including multiple interviewers can take more time, it does make for a more thorough system that is more capable of avoiding bad hires.

Respect those red flags

When red flags start to appear, either eliminate the candidate from consideration, or consider them for another open position. Regardless of the solution, it’s important to act rapidly. It’s human nature to give second chances and you don’t want someone to ‘back door’ their way through the process and into your company.

Remember, you don’t want to punish your top staff members with bad hires. Your best employees typically end up picking up the slack of a bad hire, and this can cause all kinds of issues with your best and brightest.

Partner with Cornerstone Staffing Solutions!

At Cornerstone, we take the heavy lifting out of the hiring process for our clients so they can focus their energies elsewhere. Please contact us today to find out how we can help your company.


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