How much money do you think you waste for every bad hire you’ve made for the company? £100? £1000? £10,000? And what are you doing to ensure that you only hire the best talent; the right talent?
According to CIPD, you could cost your company for hiring the wrong person, on average from £8,200 to £12,00 for more senior positions. A lot of money right… but do companies only make the one bad hire a year? There’s so much that the Head of Resourcing can do to ensure that this is minimised.
- Better training for recruiters
- Implementing human resource and recruitment technology
- Make use of references
- Create better job descriptions
- Better planning (rushing and filling a vacancy under pressure)
£8,200- £12,00o: How is this possible?
How does one bad hire cost the company so much money? Simple;
- Time and effort hiring the wrong person (talent attraction, interviews, candidate enagagement)
- Time and effort spent recruiting a replacement
- OR time and effort spent working so hard to ensure that the bad hire fits in and works out
- …which will mean that productivity will suffer due to the amount of time spent on training and getting the employee up to standard
- Supervisors therefore have less time for the right employees, as they are managing poorly performing employees
- So the office culture and environment also then suffers.
- And if they leave further down the line, you may have to pay out a severance pay
- Money wasted on the employee wage
- And what about the company’s reputation and costs? The reputation will be damaged if you’re seen to be hiring on a frequent basis
Mistakes can occur at any point during the candidate recruitment process. Head of Resourcing and recruiters need to know what to look out for and how to avoid making these mistakes in order to find recruitment solutions.
Vacancy requirements:
Before you post any vacancy, a recruiter needs to understand why they’re recruiting. Is it to replace an existing position, or for a new role within the company? If it’s to replace an existing employee, it’s worth identifying what was performed well in that particular role and if any changes need to be made. If it’s a new role within the company, what’s the demand for this role? Does it need to be filled by a certain time period? You therefore don’t want to advertise the role last minute, rush the recruitment process and not utilise the amount of potential talent out there.
Poor Job Description:
How can you possibly attract the right candidates if you haven’t outlined the job and its requirements? You need to say exactly what the job entails, plus list the perks of the job i.e health insurance, pension scheme, option to work from home once a week. Avoid employees leaving in the first 6 months of employment, by writing a concise and precise job description.
Being Desperate:
By using the right platforms, social recruitment, and advertising with adequate time, you’re targeting and allowing time to attract the right talent. Avoid advertising last minute and making a bad hire just because you’ve not left yourself enough time.
Not Checking References:
Ensure you perform background checks on candidates, either prior to hire or during their probation period. Yes it’s time consuming, but to understand how a potential employee works and fits in with the company, it’s best to speak with those who have worked with them and managed them. Are they genuine? Or are they just looking for any job until something else comes up?
Not Trusting Your Instincts:
Making use of recruitment technology enables the majority of the work in the recruitment process to be done by the software, however, it’s always important to trust your instinct. A recruiter’s experience and understanding of the company will help you make informed decisions, but sometimes a hunch is a good way to avoid hiring the wrong individual for the role.
Ignoring Cultural Fit:
Have you talked about your company culture and ethics on your job description? Provided an insight into the company through employee testimonials? Yes you are looking for someone with the perfect match in terms of qualifications and experience, but a potential employee also needs to fit in with the company culture, with the team and feel comfortable at their new place of work. And the new team needs to feel comfortable with the new addition to the team. Avoid conflicts between employees by finding out a little more about them, use social recruiting i.e. look at their LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter profiles to identify any nasty surprises.
These few tips should help the Head of Resourcing, and their recruiters, avoid hiring the wrong candidates and costing the company a small fortune! More and more companies are implementing recruitment technology to help manage the recruitment process, scheduling vacancies to be advertised and sharing the workload with colleagues. Tribepad offer recruitment technology; to find out more about how it can help you, save you money and improve your efforts please read our blog ‘4 reasons you need a recruitment system’ or browse our website.
