The wrong hire can cost your business time, money, and stress, but it can be hard to tell who will be a bad hire during the interview process. This blog offers advice on how to gain deeper insight into candidates before you hire them and helps employers and hiring managers learn to look beyond the first impression in interviews to notice important cues that reveal a candidate’s true nature. Here’s how not to get tricked into making a bad hiring decision:
Don’t rush. We’ve all been in a position where we needed to hire quickly but rushing through the process is the first thing to avoid when you’re trying to make a smart, long-term hire. Hurrying through the hiring process means you’re more likely to skip valuable screening steps and overlook red flags from candidates out of desperation to fill the job. Don’t fall into this trap—it will cost you more overall.
Ask open-ended questions in interviews and ask for examples to statements made on your candidate’s resume. You’ve heard of the phrase “leading the witness” and there’s such a thing as “leading the candidate” too. If you want to ask someone how strong their Excel skills are, don’t ask, “Do you have strong Excel skills?” or, “How strong are your Excel skills?” Phrasing the question like this leads the candidate into a generic and non-specific response that they already know you want to hear. They’ll respond with “Yes” or “Very strong” but you need them to be more specific. A better way to ask this question is to say, “Tell me about your Excel experience and the different functions you know how to use.” This is no longer a “Yes or No” question and requires specific information to give a strong response. Similarly, if a candidate has “Customer Service” listed as a strength on their resume and customer service is a core part of the job they’d be doing for you, then it’s smart to ask for an example of a time when they demonstrated excellent customer service in a prior job. You could say, “I see that you have customer service as a key skill on your resume. Tell me about a time when you had to help a customer solve a problem. What was the problem and how did you handle it?”
Avoid hiring people who are negative or contentious up front. These people are doing you a favor by showing their true personality and poor judgement early on when they should be putting forth the very best version of themselves. Examples of this can include speaking badly about a former employer, manager, or colleague and can also include negativity around the job search process, former responsibilities, and work environment. Even if they left a truly awful work environment with a terrible culture, harping too much or too emphatically on this is unprofessional. If a candidate appears too aggressive, critical, sarcastic, or combative during the interview process this is also a red flag.
Look for examples of physical and mental organization. A resume is usually the first physical example of how organized a person is. A well organized, clear, and concise resume is a sign that your candidate has the ability to demonstrate these important skills in their work. Similarly, an organized thought process during the interview is a sign of mental organization. Candidates who demonstrate focus in interviews are not “winging it” and have prepared to talk about why your job is appealing to them and why they want to work for your company. If someone doesn’t ask any questions or if the questions they ask are canned and generic, this is a sign of disorganization and a lack of proper preparation.
Check references. This is something many companies have moved away from, but it can shed some really interesting light on your top contenders. Your applicant’s choice of reference says a lot about them too. References will sometimes surprise you with what they reveal and almost always tell you something indirectly about your applicant. Some might react with surprise at being called for a reference if your applicant didn’t ask their permission first (this shows your applicant has poor planning and weak communication skills). Some references might be unprofessional or unpolished in their communication style (this shows poor judgement from your applicant over who they chose to ask). Some references won’t respond or call you back (this paints their relationship with the applicant in a negative light). Even positive references can tell you something valuable. If a reference is too gloating, oozes compliments, and refuses to offer any critical insight, they may have been coached on what to say and their reference isn’t as sincere.
Examine past hiring mistakes. Where have you gone wrong in the past? Take a closer look at your last few bad hires and make a list of the traits those people had that made them a poor fit. As you examine the list, you’ll naturally become more skilled at screening for these qualities going forward. Share your list with other decision makers at your company too so you’re all on the same page. Identify and document pre-screening questions that you can ask a candidate to help you weed out others with the same traits. If your last bad hire didn’t turn in work on time, then you could start asking future candidates questions like, “How do you manage your time when you have multiple priorities?” or “Tell me about a time when you had to be really strategic to meet a deadline.”
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