Why You Should Hire Better
Bridge ATX has been working with several companies over the last few months on the "Six Steps to a Better Hire Process". We've seen some tremendous turn around in both how people feel about the hiring process (both the interviewer and the interviewee) as well as the quality of hires that come from the process.
How A Bad Hire Can Hurt You
Let's use the scenario that it takes six months before you actually fire someone who is a bad hire. Most companies will only look at the salary that was lost with that bad hire, but there's so much more to it.
The company loses:- 6 months worth of salary paid to the bad hire
- The cost of the benefits paid to the bad hire
- Productivity of the team that has to work with the bad hire
- Time and money spent training the new hire
- Time spent on the projects that the bad hire was working on
- Time spent to start the hiring process all over again
If that bad hire was a $50K a year position who is paid 30% benefits working with a team of 5 people who are now 20% less productive with a training budget of $5K per hire. Then that company will have lost:
- 6 months of 50K a year - 25K
- 30% benefits - 7.5K
- 6 months of lost productivity - (assuming 5 employees lost 20% productivity and were paid 50K) - 25K
- Training budget - 5K
That's a total of $62,500 for 6 months for the bad hire.. Not to mention the time and market that has been lost as well.
The scary part is that most companies do not get rid of the dead weight, they try to make it work. I've heard estimates from some people that a bad hire costs a company up to 3 - 4 times that bad hire's salary for the duration of the time they are working for the organization.
The Way Most Companies Hire
Most companies hire either because budget has finally opened to allow them to hire someone new OR because someone has left an organization. If the position is a new position, most companies will go out to the internet and try to find a job description that looks similar to what they are looking for and tailor it a little bit to meet their needs. If the position is there to replace someone who has left, most companies will write a job description based on all the activities that the last person in the role worked on. Sometimes companies will take a job description that they had from several years ago and dust it off and add a little and use that as their job description. Many companies will leave "company specific" terminology in their job descriptions.
Five minutes before it's time to interview a candidate, a interviewer will be handed or emailed a copy of the candidate's resume. The interviewer will quickly scan the resume to see if they can come up with some questions based on what is written in the resume. The interviewer will enter the room with the candidate and ask these questions along with some standard behavioral questions like "Tell me about your greatest accomplishments" or "What do you think are your greatest weaknesses". Candidates are prepared and have rehearsed their answers to all of these questions. If the candidate has been interviewing a lot, they are already aware of all of the pitfalls in their resume (that is if they have left those pitfalls in).
The interviewer makes a decision based on "Do I like this person sitting across the table from me?" or "Do I think I can work with this person?". Many companies have hired individuals who have different personalities so for a candidate it is a very trying situation to get everyone to "like them" during the interview. Some interviewers don't even care or understand why they are there.
Most interviewers are only involved in the interview process once or twice a year (especially at smaller companies). There is no reason for them to become an expert at the hiring process.
Sometimes companies get very lucky with their hires. A great candidate is put in front of them and it's a great fit for the organization. However, frequently, the person chosen is not the best fit and they are instead "made to fit" the role.
How To Hire Better
So, what if you could do it differently?
The first thing I do is work with a company to really understand all requirements for a roles (functional, behavioral, cultural and physical). Then I write a custom job description based on all the specifics that are defined for this role. After that I design the full hiring process:
- Sourcing
- Filtering
- Interviewing
- Selection
I love to work with companies to design interview scenarios that will uncover natural behaviors instead of rehearsed behaviors. For example, before there were Iphones to occupy people while they waited, I used to have a test to see if I had a true problem solver or not. I would purposefully delay myself by 3 - 5 minutes after the interview was supposed to start. I would leave a little puzzle in the room in a certain place on the desk. If the puzzle had not moved by the time I entered the room I knew that I was not looking a natural problem solver. A natural problem solver would have had to pick up the puzzle and at least try it out a little bit to see if they can figure it out. The very best problem solvers would ask me later how to solve the puzzle because it would drive them crazy not to know the answer.
For more information on how I do this, please contact me at Businesses@BridgeATX.com. For more information on the process review Six Steps to a Better Hire.
