Four most common hiring mistakes and their impact on team management

searching for right employeeWhile selecting or hiring a team member or an individual employee, it is very important to keep all the aspects of job description and job requirements under consideration.

Selecting the wrong person for the job can have a negative impact on the entire business. For example, consider the overall turnover cost to be around 40% of the employee’s annual salary. If you do the math: If you have a turnover of 2 employees per year, with average annual salary of around $40,000, you are already incurring about $32,000 just to keep the number of employees.

The managers can do many things to decrease, or lower these turnover costs e.g. hiring the right person or keeping the employees motivated.

Here, in the following article we provide for you 5 of the most common mistakes that managers make while hiring an employee and how those mistakes can have a negative trickle-down effect on your management of the team.

1. Selling the job to the candidate

Salary Vs Benefits on a Matrix ChartIn a tight labor market, managers often feel like selling the job to the candidate. Because the managers think that the candidate already has some offers on the table from the competing companies. So, instead of going through the entire procedure of interview and analysis, they tend to hire the candidate on the basis of his/her degree and academic background.

Effect on management of the team

This can create an extra sense of importance in the mind of the new employee. He might get the feeling that the company needs him more than the other employees. Though, he/she is just a trainee at his initial stage but the perception that has been created for the new employee and the expectations in their mind can turn out to be a bad experience for the employee as well as the company’s team.

2. Getting persuaded easily

Most of the managers get persuaded very easily. They rely heavily on the resume, CV and cover letters of the candidates. They tend to forget that it is just the first step of hiring, and they end up making judgments on the basis of written document of the candidates. According to researches made, around 40% of the candidates or the applicants are lying in their CV or Resume. Seeing a big company’s name on the CV or Resume of the candidate can give the perception that the employee has a strong set of skills and abilities.

Effect on management of the team

This generally ends up with managers hiring an inappropriate person for the job. A good CV or Resume does not imply that the candidate will settle and work out for your job description, in your given organization’s environment and culture. The temperament, psyche and thinking pattern cannot be judged from the CV or cover letter and if you don’t know how a certain candidate (that you have hired) will react to a particular situation, the overall effectiveness of the work team of the company is compromised.

3. Interviewing too many candidates

PSI career work-life reportHaving too many candidates or applicants for a job can increase your costs, and the hiring managers are more likely to make a mistake. For example, if you ask the hiring manager to interview around 50 candidates a day. At the end of the day, the managers will not be able to remember the faces, let alone the personal abilities and university level achievements of the candidates or applicants. Generally, the managers should keep the CV or the interviewee in front and make notes as they conduct the interview to easily select the right person for the job.

Effect on management of the team

It is very difficult to manage a large pool of candidates during the interview session. Sometimes, managers make mistakes by confusing the applicants with one another. A large pool of applicants can increase company’s costs, take more time and increases the chances of hiring the wrong candidate for the job. A mistake like this can negatively affect the work team that was expecting the best person for a project.

4. Not being able to ask the right questions

Broad questions lead to broad answers, e.g. a question like ‘’ what should we know about you?’’ has a greater chance of getting you a broad or irrelevant answer. The hiring managers should be well aware of the work team that will be joined by the new employee. Moreover, it is always recommended that the team leader or project manager is in the hiring panel. They can ask the technical and cognitive questions helping the hiring team select the required personnel for the job.

Effect on management of the team

If there is a requirement for a technical guy and the hiring managers ask personal or cognitive questions and vice versa, the entire hiring effort goes to waste. Therefore, as mentioned above, it is always recommended that the team leader is given the opportunity to interact with, question and have their say in selecting the required candidates for the job. Otherwise, the hired employee will be an alien to his new work team with least information and knowledge about them.