5 Deadly Sins Of Hiring

Hiring good employees gives you the best opportunity to defeat your competition. This article is going to help you avoid some of the big mistakes. Here are the 5 deadly sins of hiring.

First Deadly Sin: Hiring out of desperation

Be hones, have you ever hired out of desperation? This is one of the greatest problems associated with hiring. Most people have not hired for a while and suddenly are faced with an urgent business need (spelled desperation). You need someone to fix it now.

If only this person sitting in front of you was the right person then all your problems would disappear. This is very dangerous thinking and leads to huge problems.

The best analogy I can give you is a story from a recent flight. It was at the end of a long business trip and of course, the plane was delayed. We were sitting on the ground waiting for some mechanical problem to be fixed. The pilot came on and said he knew how frustrating it was but it was a whole lot better being on the ground wishing you were flying than being up in the air wishing you were on the ground.

It is a much better place to be wishing you had the right employee on board than it is having the wrong person and wishing you didn't. If you feel you are going to make a desperate decision, take a breath and remember the impact of your decision.

Second Deadly Sin: Being Unprepared

Picking up the resume as the candidate walks into your office is not preparation. Hiring without a completed success profile is not preparation. Preparation is treating hiring as the most important activity you perform to grow your business. It is learning to do it right and applying the process with great detail. Sloppy hiring decisions can be the most expensive mistakes you make in your business so take the time to do it right.

Third Deadly Sin: Missing Information

A question I love to ask new clients is, "Are you getting the information you need or are you getting what the candidate wants to share with you?" These may not be the same sets of information.

You need to know what is important if you are going to get the right information. A performance-based success profile (a document that clearly describes the successful person) is your roadmap to the exact information you need. Think of it as a template of the successful person. You will NOT miss important information with this document firmly in your hands during the interview.

Fourth Deadly Sin: Open-Ended Questions

Open-ended questions do not work, they never have worked and they never will work. Leave the open-ended questions to the uninformed.

Instead, ask effective, behavioral questions. Ask questions that have only one answer and can be easily answered by the candidate. Ask questions that get information that will help you predict the person's behavior on your job. Ask question that don't require you to interpret the answer.

The right questions are the key to an effective interview.

The easiest way to remember the point is to ask specific questions versus general questions.

Fifth Deadly Sin: Jumping To Conclusions

You can't make great hiring decision after two or five minutes in an interview. Decisions made in two or five minutes are made based on impressions, not facts. It takes time to gather enough information to make an informed decision. You need to ask lots of questions. You need to probe and get complete information. This can't be done in minutes.

You can get impressions in the first few minutes but its important to train yourself not to make decisions based only on impressions. Keep working at gathering data because the more data you have, the better your better your decisions.

Now I could go on and list another 20-25 sins but this should give you enough to get the year started. Put the same effort into your hiring decisions that you do in all your other critical business decisions and you will be just fine.