6 Mistakes That Scare Away New Hires

Finding the correct candidate for an open position can be a tedious process for businesses today. That said, image how tedious the process must be for a potential hire. Simply put, the best and brightest are not very inclined to accept a job offer if the company's practices are tedious to begin with. Naturally, businesses want to cross their T's and dot their I's when vetting a potential hire, and that is often a necessary process. However, the hiring process can take multiple paths, some of which prove to be messy at best and unnavigable at worst.

Businesses may need to take a step back and measure their hiring processes to determine how challenging the process is and how those processes reflect on the company, as well as impact the corporate culture and the ability to build teams. Critical elements that are negatively impacted by contrived, illogical, and tedious hiring processes.

There are six common mistakes that many businesses make when trying to hire the best candidates for a position. Those mistakes often force a potential candidate to flee the building and refuse any forthcoming job offer. Not an experience that a business seeking to hire the best and brightest wants to have.

Those mistakes include:

• The appearance of high turnover: In today's volatile job market, high turnover may be a fact of life. However, if an interviewer highlights that fact that high turnover is a way of life at the company, they will potentially scare away any serious potential employee. A best practice is to discuss what the factors leading to turn over are and to explain the situation in an honest and logical fashion.
• Discussing other candidates: A potential new hire will see the discussion of other job candidates as a violation of privacy and will wonder what will be discussed about themselves. A best practice is to focus on the job description and the requirements of the job and never discuss other candidates with the interviewee.
• Interviewers not respecting a candidate's time: Interviewers must remember that potential candidates value their time as much as they do. Wasting a candidate's time is a sure fire way to show that a company is not only disorganized, but also puts very little value on an employee's time. A best practice would be to stick to schedules, be prepared, and conduct interviews in an efficient manner.
• Interviewers are not all on the same page about the job description: Simply put, those conducting interviews are not fully familiar with the position that is being filed and have not put the full effort into researching what the job description actually consists of. Nothing scares off a potential hire more than representatives of the organization not being familiar with the positions that need to be filled. A best practice here is to make sure that every interviewer understands what the position entails and can answer a candidate's questions.
• Interviewers lack transparency about challenges faced: One of the biggest mistakes an interviewer can make is to sugar coat the issues the company is trying to resolve by hiring new employees. In many cases, those interviewers border on explaining situations in a fashion that comes across as “too good to be true". A Best practice here is to offer a concise explanation of what is expected in the company and offer transparency about challenges in the work environment.
• Making an immediate job offer: Nothing scares off a potential hire more than making an immediate offer to hire them on a first interview. That practice demonstrates that a company has not performed its due diligence for vetting the potential hire and also demonstrates a lack of commitment to following proper hiring procedures. An immediate offer can sometimes be interpreted as a sign of desperation, or as a lack of commitment to fully vetting potential new hires. A best practice here is to only offer a position after references have been checked, background checks conducted and other due diligence chores are completed. Correctly executing on those procedures demonstrates to a potential employee that the business is committed to finding the best candidate.

Avoiding the above mistakes can go a long way towards hiring the most appropriate candidates. However, many organizations are either spread too thin or lack the HR experience to follow through on best practices for hiring. If that is the case, the best solution for filling vacancies may come from engaging a staffing company, and shift the burden over to professionals that are well tuned to the intricacies of the hiring process and know how to take the tedium out of a candidate search.