3 Hiring Mistakes You Could Be Making

The success of a franchised business often comes down to who you hire. Your employees determine if you deliver a reliable product or service and provide customers with an enjoyable experience, which makes them your most important investment. For this reason, you can’t afford to make poor hiring decisions. Here are three hiring mistakes you could be making right now and steps you can take to improve your process.

Inaccurate Job Descriptions

The role and responsibilities of a given position evolve over time, which often leads to job descriptions that are imprecise and outdated. Often times, employers will hire a new employee without fully understanding what they will be doing once hired. This is problematic because it prevents hiring managers from effectively preparing new hires to succeed in their role and means you will need to spend more time managing and training new hires. In addition, when employees expect one thing from a new job and the job doesn’t live up to their expectations, they will feel frustrated, which can negatively affect retention.

Talking Too Much

Many hiring managers make the mistake of doing most of the talking during the interview phase – providing candidates with information about the company, describing the role to them, and explaining how the hiring process works. Since this is mostly information that could be given to candidates before the start of the interview, your time is better spent asking the candidates behavior-based questions, showing them around the office, and introducing them to prospective colleagues. If you do all the talking, you won’t learn enough about the candidate to effectively evaluate them, so focus on asking them questions that prompt them to speak candidly and give responses that reflect how they approach challenges.

Hiring the Right Person at the Wrong Time

A common mistake employers make is hiring a candidate because they like them as a person. No matter how much you relate to a candidate or how much you believe in them, you have to think about how qualified they are for the role in question. A candidate can have skills and qualifications that could make them a great asset to your franchise, but that doesn’t mean they have the experience to succeed in the role you’re hiring for. In such a situation, you have to either find a different role that better suits their skill set or stay in touch for future open positions. It isn’t fair to hire someone if you’re really just setting them up to fail.

A bad hire wastes time, money, and resources. But you can bypass the hassle by avoiding common hiring mistakes, such as talking too much, not doing enough prep work, and hiring the right person for the wrong role. When you extend a job offer, you need to feel confident that the person you’re about to hire will be able to succeed in the role and work effectively with your team.

by Nancy Estep