Although most employers realize the need for pre-employment testing, character assessment, background checks, and extensive interviews before hiring a new employee, too few businesses follow this sound advice. If your company doesn´t adhere to standardized hiring procedures, you´re asking for trouble. Bear in mind that the cost of a single poor hire could easily exceed the cost of properly screening dozens of applicants.
Emotion, rather than logic, drives most bad hiring decisions. Here are five of the most common emotional traps that can skew the process:
- Desperation: Most desperate decisions are foolish. If you´re desperate to fill a position, have the person hired through a temporary employment agency. Don´t add anyone to your payroll who hasn´t gone through the standard hiring process.
- Infatuation: Studies show that employers generally make the decision to hire during the first 10 minutes of an interview, then spend the rest of the time justifying their choice - similar to the way we buy cars. To avoid the perils of infatuation, always involve more than one person in the interview. Bear in mind that even total losers can often generate infatuation during the hiring process. If you find yourself liking somebody perhaps a little too much, beware!
- Laziness: It´s not that we´re lazy. But there´s already a ton of work to do without having to worry about hiring someone. When job responsibilities become overwhelming, it´s all too easy to view the hiring process as something to "get over with." In our haste to get back to work, we create a hiring waste.
- Stereotyping: "A woman can´t operate a forklift." "A male can´t make a good head nurse." "Females and minorities don´t belong in the boardroom." This type of pigeonholing impedes effective hiring decisions. For example, after the New York Philharmonic began using "blind auditions" (in which musicians played their instruments behind a curtain so that the conductor couldn´t identify the candidate by gender), twice as many women were hired.
- Networking: Don´t short-circuit an effective hiring process just because someone else recommended an applicant. Make sure that this person has the skills, character, and background to become a trustworthy member of your team. This is true even when dealing with placement agencies or temp firms. Find out what process they went through before recommending the applicant. Then fill in the gaps or ask that they do so.
A final note: If you don´t have a written hiring process, then you don´t have a hiring process! Put it in writing, follow it to the letter every time, and you´ll avoid 99% of hiring disasters.
