What Are the Primary Causes of Hiring Mistakes?

In our experience, hiring mistakes are not caused by willful ignorance or negligence.

Most often, new executive failure has several interrelated causes. The primary interrelated causes are:

Inadequate Preparation for Hiring

In our major research study of the Top Ten Mistakes Executives Make in Hiring, we discovered that companies rarely outline a detailed, measurable definition of “success” that could be used to source, evaluate, and select candidates.

Instead, the companies relied on outdated or insufficient job descriptions, focused around desired attributes, education attainment, and so on. DOES THIS SOUND LIKE YOUR JOB DESCRIPTIONS? How much time does your company spend trying to really understand the success required from a given role and how that success ties directly back to department/function required outcomes and overall company results?

Lack of Information for Hiring

After our work implementing rigorous hiring practices with the surveyed companies from our research study, almost all noticed a significant improvement in the performance of new hires.

We draw the logical conclusion that at least one major cause of hiring mistakes was not widespread organizational dysfunction, but rather was a lack of information and training about how to hire more effectively.

How rigorous are your hiring practices? When was the last time you raised the bar on hiring processes? In the last few years, have you benchmarked your hiring process against those of comparable competitors? Are you in the top 20% or the bottom 20%? Do you even know where your company stands?

Human Nature in Hiring

Interpersonal situations like interviews, when conducted in a vacuum, are often guided primarily by gut feelings. Studies have been over the past few decades that show most hiring decisions have nothing to do with skills, competencies, or ability – instead they are based on rapport, likeability, and the ambiguous phrase “chemistry”.

Hiring team members who have not been trained to minimize these distractions are easily influenced by false perceptions, bias, emotions, and nonverbal cues.

Think back on your hiring decisions over the last few years. How many times did you jump at hiring someone because it “felt” right? How many times have you hired someone who couldn’t achieve your expectations – only to come to the realization (after 20/20 hindsight), that you should have been more “rigorous” in the hiring process?

When provided with a toolset designed to counterbalance bias, emotions, likeability, false rapport and chemistry, hiring is far more likely to overcome these “distractions” and result in hiring people who can deliver your desired outcomes.

Eliminate Hiring Mistakes

If you would like to discover whether your company has an effective hiring process – one that can overcome these deep fundamental causes of hiring mistakes -  take our 8-point Hiring Self-assessment and discover the core areas you need to improve upon to be able to hire top talent.

Imagine being able to eliminate hiring mistakes, bring better talent into your company, achieve your desired results, and reduce turnover for non-performance. Would that be worth taking 5 minutes to discover if your current hiring process is effective in hiring top talent.

We’ve seen thousands of companies from around the world improve just a few elements of their hiring process and raise hiring accuracy from typical levels in the 50% range well into the 80% plus range.

If you’re ready to start improving your hiring accuracy and you’re ready to begin eliminating all those frustrating hiring mistakes, download our FREE Hiring Process Assessment Scorecard by clicking here.

Barry Deutsch

P.S. Don’t forget to join our Hire and Retain Top Talent Discussion Group on LinkedIn where hiring process improvement, interview questions, and finding top talent are discussed in more depth.

Related posts:

1. The Top Ten Hiring Mistakes
2. How To Overcome The Top Ten Hiring Mistakes
3. Stop Making Hiring Mistakes Audio Program