In any industry, employees are every business owner’s most valuable asset. The people who work for you are the ones who can bring your goals to fruition using their skills, experience, knowledge, and labor. Hence, hiring the right people from the start is crucial for your business growth and success.
Whether you are using a platform that has a job portal website development feature or handpicking candidates from LinkedIn, here are the most common recruitment mistakes that you must avoid at all costs:
1. Having vague job descriptions
A job posting should have a clear job title and an even clearer job description. Otherwise, you can end up wasting your time interviewing applicants who are not willing to do the day-to-day tasks required for their role. Set crystal clear expectations right from the very start. And when interviewing applicants, ensure that the interviewers discuss the job description in detail with each applicant.
2. Not hiring enough people
Not hiring enough people means that the people you do hire will perform the tasks of more than one person. This can easily lead to overworked employees who are burnt out more often than not and less willing to stay with your company. The result? Poor work performance, an unhealthy work culture, and low employee retainment, to name a few.
Don’t wait for this to happen to your business. Even before you start, ensure that you have enough positions to run the business without pushing your employees too far, lest you face the consequences.
3. Relying on the interview too much
While the interview is a critical part of the process, it’s not the end-all-be-all of recruitment. Applicants come in with rehearsed answers that might not truly reflect who they are as a person and what they are like as an employee. Hence, aside from the interview, you might also want to give out tests or exercises that can help gauge their on-the-job skills and attitudes.
4. Expecting loyalty
Small business owners must come to terms with the fact that not all employees will stay loyal, even if you offer them the best benefits package and provide a swanky office desk. The first few people that you hire first can decide to leave after a few months or years, and this is not something that you should take personally. Every employee has different goals and aspirations. Even your highest-paid worker can decide to pursue greener pastures after some time. Hence, it’s not a sound HR strategy to expect nor demand loyalty from employees. If they want to stay, they will stay. But if not, there’s nothing much you can do about it.
5. Waiting too long
Don’t hire out of desperation, but don’t wait too long for the perfect candidate to walk through the door, either. Finding an applicant who fits the role perfectly is rare. But while you are waiting for that person, you might be compromising your current employees’ performance by keeping the team understaffed.
So don’t treat your candidate checklist as something set in stone. Instead, use it as more of a guide to hiring a candidate that meets the most critical requirements of the role, has excellent soft skills, and exhibits a remarkable capacity to learn.
6. Hiring in a rush
While it’s not good practice to wait too long to hire, it’s also not a good idea to rush the hiring process either. Hiring out of desperation can end you up with a candidate who is under-qualified or underperforming, or at least someone who doesn’t fit well in your company culture. As a result, you can spend even more time and money in finding someone who is a better fit, as well as sacrifice the productivity of your existing team.
7. Having too-high expectations
All employees require some time to integrate into the workplace, so don’t expect them to find a good pace right away. Instead, help them familiarize themselves with the business through a fair onboarding process. Give them time to adjust to the workplace and get to know the rest of the team. With enough time, they will start producing the results you expect when you took them on board.
For small businesses, hiring the right people is the most crucial factor of success. In doing so, you can ensure that the people on your team share the same goals, possess the required skills, and fit well with the culture you’re trying to build. Hence, as you start building your team, make extra efforts to avoid these common recruitment mistakes.
