Not you, personally of course. I have no idea what your hiring practices are like, and it's entirely possible that you have the best hiring practices out there and a wonderful track record with just the right level of retention. But if that's so, I do have to wonder a little bit what you're doing here reading this blog. Shouldn't you be writing your own blog or book, or just generally cashing in on your wonderful hiring secrets?
Or maybe some of the following situation sounds familiar.
You have an unexpected job opening, because someone gave notice, you had to let someone go, business grew more that expected, etc. You need to fill this position, preferably soon, and having the vacancy is causing you some stress. Maybe it's not the biggest issue on your plate at the moment, but it's a constant low level irritation, a reminder that certain things are not getting done and the workload is piling up. Maybe you don't have that unexpected job opening just yet, but you know you will soon, because someone is going on mat leave, or back to school, or something.
So, you start by digging out your job description. Maybe you have a job ad template that you already use, maybe you make one up, maybe you call HR or your recruitment firm. You get your ad out there. You post on working.com or monster.ca, or craisglist. You post on your organization's career page. Maybe, possibly, you post on LinkedIn or twitter. And the resumés start coming in, through your ATS or your email.
Suddenly, you have stacks of resumés to sort through. Some of them look pretty good, some of them are terrible, and some of them are in between. You sort your piles and start calling your potential candidates, and some of them don't want to travel so far, some of them want way more money than you can offer, and some of them don't call you back. Some of them come in for interviews and are awful, some of them don't show up. You're getting a headache now, everytime you think of your unfilled position, because all you really want is someone who can do the job. Sure, you'd love a superstar candidate, but at this point, you'd settle for competent if it meant you didn't have to deal with the interviews and the resumés and the whole bit.
Then you interview a candidate who seems decent. Reasonably qualified, personable, etc. You're so relieved, because this one could be the one. You just want to fill the role. And your candidate has several years of industry experience, knows the software you use, and is extroverted and personable. So you make your candidate an offer, and voila, you have yourself a new employee.
And then it all starts to go wrong. Your new employee seems to be really disorganized, stressed out, and alienates your customers and fellow employees. Chronic lateness becomes a problem, and performance is simply not up to par. Ultimately, you have to let your new hire go and start the process all over again.
Bad hires cost a lot. Think about all the time and money invested in trying to recruit somebody in the first place, the salary costs of paying someone who simply isn't up to par, performance-wise, the lost customers due to poor service, and now you're right back where you started, with another round of recruiting in front of you. But we tend to get so stressed out about having an opening and all of the stress surrouding recruitment that we jump on hiring a candidate who interviews well without maybe doing everything we could do in order to determine if our potential candidate is a good fit.
Hiring too quickly is the single biggest mistake you can make, and it is potentially a very expensive one, not to mention a waste of effort. Spending more time with a position unfilled, if it means you end up with a better candidate, is a better way to go. Don't rush to hire, don't take shortcuts from your usual, well-thought-out interview and selection process. Don't skip the reference check "just this once" and don't ever assume that hiring someone you have reservations about is better than leaving the role empty, because in a lot of cases, it simply isn't true. This holds true whether you're the hiring manager who has to oversee the vacant role or whether you're the recruiter trying to find good candidates. Don't hire quickly- hire well.
Of course, if you're losing your good candidates because they have other offers by the time you get around to making your own offer, well, you may have the opposite problem. But that's a post for another day.
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