The recruitment process can be extremely tedious and complicated. But despite that, you need to make sure you don’t make any mistakes during the entire timeline because a candidate can make or break your organization’s growth. Businesses, especially small businesses, cannot afford to make hiring mistakes because they do not have a full-fledged HR team to manage disasters. Moreover, common recruitment mistakes can even cost your organization a deserving talent. Here are eight of the most common recruiting pitfalls everyone should avoid at all costs:
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8 Common Hiring Mistakes that Can Cost You a Valuable Talent
- Not Laying a Strong Foundation
Before you even begin the process of hiring new candidates, you need to take a look at your own company structure. Does the organization follow a proper policy? Do you have a clear picture of your company culture? Once you have looked back at the company’s foundation, you need to then look at the job description. It should describe everything you need in a candidate, while also ensuring it’s not a long and complicated list of unachievable talents.
- Disregarding Cover Letters
Cover letters are like a mirror for further looking into your candidate’s abilities. It provides strong proof that helps you in judging whether your applicants pay attention to details, follow instructions, or commit any typing errors. This shows their negligence and dedication toward finding a job role.
- Paying Minimal Attention to Resumes
Resumes are more than important because you get to understand a candidate’s skills and talents. Some even include their work samples, further helping you judge better. Yes, it’s difficult to pay great attention to the hundreds of resumes you receive daily. But overlooking them altogether because you are in a hurry to hire one qualified candidate, is one of the major mistakes that you need to avoid at all costs!
- Not Mentioning Your Company Terms
There’s nothing more disappointing for both recruiters and candidates than giving your valuable time to applicants who are not okay with your company’s terms and conditions.
Do you expect your employees to commute to the office? Are the weekends off? How many paid leaves do you offer? Do you have health insurance for them? These are some of the most important questions a candidate can have in their mind. You must mention them either in the job description or at least during the interview, to avoid confusion.
- Not Planning Interview Properly
An interview is the only time when you get to talk to the candidate freely and ask all the questions you need to in order to understand them better. But there are times when you run out of questions or miss asking what you really needed to ask. Here’s when proper planning can help you get out of this situation.
Before the interview, prepare a set structure of questions. You can create a template that’s different for each department. It minimizes your workload.
During the interview, include more open-ended questions instead of the ones that end with a yes or no answer. Present a situation to your candidate and ask them how would they react to it. Ask whether they have faced a similar situation and how did they overcome it.
- Overselling and Underselling Your Company Culture
Company culture impacts the work quality of your employee, hence it is important for your candidate to understand how things work in your organization. However, don’t oversell it because if your description doesn’t match their expectations, they will be disappointed upon onboarding.
Similarly, underselling your company culture is also something you should avoid. Mention the work environment and other things along with the duties, skills, and requirements in the job description.
- Not Conducting a Background Check
A verification check is extremely important before you shortlist a candidate. This can further save you from problems because you get to understand how genuine your candidate is, and a brief look into career history and any previous work problems.
- Ignoring Candidate Feedback
Whether you have hired the candidate or not, it is important to know their experience during the entire interview. You can avoid this mistake by keeping in touch with the applicant at every stage of hiring. When you proactively communicate, you showcase a positive company image to the candidate. They might even talk positively about your organization to their connections – what’s better than great word-of-mouth marketing?
Everyone Makes Mistakes, and That’s Fine!
Recruiting is not simple, and you are only a human who makes mistakes. But there’s always scope to learn, improve and grow. As much as hiring the right applicant is important, providing a good candidate experience is equally essential. So, make sure you don’t let these mistakes become a huge hurdle in your way of experiencing a smooth recruitment pipeline.