Hiring and Retaining Top Talent Blog

Is this what your hiring decisions occassionally feel like? How many times in the past have you crossed you fingers praying that the candidate would make it through the 90 day probationary period?

Why do hiring executives and managers frequently find themselves at this stage of the hiring process? We explore the top ten reasons why hiring mistakes occur in the executive summary on our website. You can read about the summary, download a copy of it under our free resources, or get a copy of the audio program if you prefer to listen to the various errors and mistakes that are commonly made in the hiring process.

I'll offer three key reasons in this  post why this syndrome occurs:

First, most companies do a terrible job in accurately defining their expectations for the position. Most of the time the job description is used as a substitute for the hard work of defining real outcomes and deliverables.

Second, most companies fall victim to high school sports recruiting as their primary strategy. There is a tendency to take whoever shows up at your doorstep as the entire candidate pool. It's important to remember that running ads only attracts a very small percentage of the potential candidate pool and there is usually a very poor overall quality to the caliber of candidate that responds to an ad. See our article on Why Do Most Companies Treat Recruiting Like a High School Sport?

Third, many times the combination of desperation hiring and first impressions leads executives and managers to the wrong conclustions about people. We fall in love during the interview and ignore all negative information. Layered on top of that is a desperate need to get any body into the chair since some body is better than no body goes the conventional wisdom.

Take these three major mistakes and errors and you've got a recipe in which hope becomes the dominant strategy for making a good hire. HOPE IS NOT A STRATEGY. Making great hires takes a well-thought out process, discipline, and the focused effort.

Is the success of hiring great people at your company primarily function of hope?

Barry Deutsch

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