All hiring managers want to hire the best talent, that’s a given. However, it’s not always guaranteed. Even some of the best HR professionals can get it wrong and it might not be because they can’t find good talent.
Perhaps the hiring process is flawed. Maybe the role isn’t clearly defined. Or maybe you’re looking for your talent in the wrong places. Whatever the reason, hiring mistakes can happen. The problem is, a bad hire can have a major impact on the team, the workflow and the company.
Let’s start with the most obvious and direct cost when you make a bad hire. The onboarding and training of someone new is expensive but is mostly offset by the value added by that person once they’ve settled in. Unless of course, they turn out to be a bad hire.
Remember, a bad hire doesn’t necessarily mean they’re not good talent, it just means they’re not necessarily the right fit for your company. But either way, if you’re not going to hold onto them, you won’t see that return on investment for training. Now, you have to spend that money all over again on someone new, not to mention the time it will take to hire that replacement.
A bad hire can have a serious impact on company culture, even if they’re not there for very long. Look first at the team that person was working with. How have they affected that team’s productivity and morale? Has this had a knock-on effect for the other teams that work with that person?
Furthermore, we know that company culture comes from the top down, but if your employees see you make a hire that has a negative impact on their team, it creates a disconnect between what you understand the company culture to be and what it actually is. You don’t want your top performers to be affected by a bad hire or a bad culture fit.
This can range from mild to serious. If your bad hire held a client or customer-facing role, their impact can be significant. However, even if they were only dealing with internal employees or they weren’t there for very long, a bad hire can affect your internal reputation. Remember what we said before about your staff taking note of your hiring choices in relation to the company culture?
Another area of reputational damage to look at is from your employer branding point of view. Candidates who see a role being up for grabs soon after they had seen it before can raise some red flags in their minds and it might discourage others from applying.
However, this does not mean you should fall into the trap of keeping a bad hire around for longer for fear it would ‘look bad’ to rehire for the role. Getting a bad hire replaced is more important than keeping up appearances. Of course, avoiding a bad hire altogether is key. So, how do you do it? Luckily for you, RECRUITERS specialises in finding the right candidates for its clients, so we know a thing or two about avoiding bad hires.
The first thing you need to do is analyse the bad hire and this should be done for two reasons. Firstly, is there somewhere else in the company that person would be better suited? Is there specific training that would turn them from a bad hire into a good one? If you can turn a bad hire around you could save some of the costs involved in having to replace them.
The second reason for analysing a bad hire is to review how they came to be. Look at what exactly made them a bad hire or rather, a bad fit and discuss how you can avoid making the same mistake the next time.
Once you work out what made a particular hire a bad one and have reviewed how they may have slipped through the cracks, it’s time to look at what makes a good hire. Take a look at your top performers and analyse what makes them so good. Identify the individual traits they have and write down the top skills and attributes you will seek in your next hire.
Now that you’ve isolated the traits that make someone a bad hire as well as the ones that make up a good hire, it’s time to review your hiring process. This means looking at everything from the job description in your ads to the interviewing process.
As we said, there aren’t necessarily bad candidates, simply bad fits. So, what part of the hiring process put a bad fit at the top of your list? Putting in standardised systems such as competency-based interviews and reference checks with set questions can go a long way. Remember, by the end of any hiring process, you should be able to see whether each candidate has the traits you’re looking for.
A bad hire may not have started out that way. Hiring managers can find the perfect candidate, only for them to appear unsuited to the role or the company simply because they haven’t been properly onboarded.
Good onboarding is vital to keep new hires engaged as they settle into their new role. Given that it can take up to a year (and some estimate even longer) for a new employee to reach their full potential, an onboarding process should be more than just a week of going through processes, introductions and tours. If you neglect the onboarding process, you risk turning even some of the best candidates into what you perceive to be ‘bad hires’.
While the above advice will help you improve your processes and systems, it can still be difficult to know where to start. That’s where hiring a recruitment partner comes in.
A good recruitment company will be able to streamline your hiring process, advise you on proper onboarding and more importantly, find you the right candidates for the job. RECRUITERS has helped employers achieve their business and hiring goals with less hassle and risk of doing it alone.
Bad hires can really affect company culture, but good employer branding can reduce this problem.Find out more about building an effective employer branding strategy here.
Want to learn more about how RECRUITERS can help you avoid bad hires and give you the best candidates? Check out our hiring solutions here.
Brian McFadden is the client services director at RECRUITERS.
Rotten apple photo by Maria Teneva on Unsplash
