Every recruiter is highly aware of the upfront and hidden costs of making a bad hire. If you’re in a staffing agency, a bad hire can ensure that you don’t get paid for your work. For an in-house recruiter losing a new hire because they were a bad fit creates repeat work and costs your organization a good deal of money. If you’re afraid of hiring the wrong person for the job, this blog can help mitigate your risk.

Here’s How to Avoid a Bad Hire

Start your recruiting process by imagining the perfect candidate. Look at the job requirements and begin to sketch out what characteristics you should look for. You’ll find both hard and soft skills in this mix because the perfect candidate should also fit the company’s culture. Ask yourself:

  • Does the job require a great deal of collaboration?
  • Should the candidate be extroverted or introverted?
  • What’s the lowest level of technical expertise that the candidate needs?

Now think about the hiring process itself. Where are holes in the process that could allow you to drive the wrong candidate straight through (and off a cliff)? How can you shore up the application process beyond the standard interview and reference check? Does the job require technical expertise that you could test somehow? Are you including employees from that department in the hiring process? 

Too, calling references in some ways is a waste of time. Why? When was the last time you called a reference that was anything less than complimentary? Job applicants will only give you a reference that will speak well of their work. You may want to dig a little deeper to find out from other resources what the candidate is really about. LinkedIn networking can be a good route if you want to validate a reference. 

Since soft skills are so important, you may consider measuring personality traits in a systematic process that helps you understand what makes the candidate “tick.” Ask yourself how well the candidate’s assessment fits that initial profile you created for the perfect candidate. Does the candidate have what it takes to be successful in the position?

Also, make sure you’re asking behavioral questions to improve the quality of your hires. Behavioral questions ask candidates to describe a particular instance where they experienced something on the job or encountered a situation where they exhibited a certain behavior. The goal of these types of questions is to learn more about the candidate by learning about their past behaviors.

All of these steps can help you shore up your ultimate decision-making around the candidate you’re considering. You’ll need a state-of-the-art applicant tracking platform like Exelare, of course, to capture candidate data and create a fair hiring process that is efficient and fast. These kinds of tools can help you establish candidate criteria with feedback from your peers. Then you set up a seamless system of analyzing, testing, and tracking candidates based on their merit. Exelare offers recruiters the applicant tracking system they need to actually improve the quality of their new hires. Talk with our team today and find out how we can help you avoid costly hiring mistakes.