Hiring and Retaining Top Talent Blog

In our experience, hiring mistakes are not caused by willful ignorance or negligence. Most often, new executive failure has several interrelated causes.
Inadequate preparation. Rarely had the hiring companies outlined a detailed, measurable definition of “success” that could be used to source, evaluate, and select candidates. Instead, they relied on outdated or insufficient job specs, focused around […]

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56% of hires fail! So just flip a coin and increase your odds.
The failure rate our client experienced with the VP of Sales position was painful for them, but it is not unusual.
When companies hire a six-figure executive, they expect them to “hit the ground running” and produce results quickly. But according to our surveys […]

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When do you start the process of hiring a new person?
Most companies start the hiring process when they need someone. They wait until the best person quits or if it is a new position they wait until they need this person. Since it can take between 2 and 4 months to hire someone, what is the […]

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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

Copyright 2008 Impact Hiring Solutions. All Rights Reserved.

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Finally an article that is starting to understand the right way to hire.
An article in BusinessWeek.com from the Harvard Business Review is starting to address the issue we have been promoting for over 10 years. One that we even wrote a book about. Our Success Factor Methodology hiring system mirrors what […]

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Can anyone think of a good reason why most companies do not invest heavily in hiring training to teach effective job interviewing techniques? Most Managers and Executives are abandoned and left alone when it comes to interview training to effectively conduct candidate assessment. Although many companies are willing to give lip-service to the concept of […]

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If hiring process goes like this, then it might need a major overhaul.When a position comes open a job description is prepared, often the previous one is updated. Ads are placed and employees are notified. As resumes come in they are screen and a few are chosen to interview. Candidate A interviews and the hiring […]

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Hiring is the only process in your company where you accept a 56% failure rate!
When companies hire a six-figure executive, they expect them to “hit the ground running” and produce results quickly. But according to our surveys of more than 20,000 hiring executives over the past fifteen years and a review of published literature […]

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Brad and I have been involved in youth and high school sports for quite some time. I coach a girls frosh-soph basketball team at our local high school. Tonite we played a game where the other team relentlessly pressed us from the beginning of the game. I probably burned 4 of my 5 timeouts in […]

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The 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.
Inadequate preparation. Rarely had the hiring companies outlined a detailed, measurable definition of “success” that could be used to source, evaluate, and select candidates. Instead, they relied on outdated or insufficient […]

[Read more →]