Top Tips on How to Avoid the Cost of Bad Hires

Quite often, businesses suffer from the financial aspects of hiring the wrong candidate. While a bad hire might entail many factors, the primary cause is the inability of the candidate to align with the company’s culture, due to personality traits, for instance. Whatever the case, it brings several losses to companies and thus is a serious problem to ponder.

Top Tips on How to Avoid the Cost of Bad Hires

As an HR manager, you would certainly not wish to waste your valuable time and money only to end up in a bad hire. To avoid the financial implications and other losses that come with bad hiring, read through and check out the points to include in your hiring process if not done so far.

What is a bad hire?

In the human resources arena, a bad hire could include anyone but not limited to:

• Not a perfect match to the job description
• Misleads the hiring team by providing false data about one’s experience etc., in interviews
• Lacks the potential to grow and develop the skills needed on the job
• Showcases inappropriate behaviors like gossiping, bullying co-workers, and such

While these are some of the general attributes defining a bad hire, it could even be someone excellent in skills and who performed well in interviews but lacks the personality traits to gel well in a strong work culture.

Research indicates that the average cost of making a bad hiring decision is at least 30% of the individual’s first-year expected earnings.

Lack of productivity, dissatisfied customers, and damage to the company’s reputation are just some penalties resulting from a bad hire.

Top tips to avoid the cost of bad hires

Consider looking at the larger picture

Study the trends of hired candidates in your organization across various levels and check the percentage of bad hires. A couple or so would not lead to any solid conclusion. However, if you have significantly experienced bad hires, that may flag some shortcomings in your hiring processes. Besides, do look into the engagement levels of employees and if they are aligned with your company culture.

Focus your strategies on hiring the best fit, aligned with the culture 

Don’t get carried away only by the skill sets or professional qualifications on a candidate’s resume. While hiring, you need to focus on their future growth potential and not just meet today’s needs. Check the motivation levels, enthusiasm, and outlook of the candidate before you arrive at a decision. 

Be Clear on the Job Description and the Desired candidate

Quite often, employers end up wasting a lot of time and effort on screening thousands of profiles as most of them don’t match the requirements of the job. A primary reason is the unclear or ambiguous job description. Make sure to create a clear and crisp job description outlining what qualifications, experience, skill sets, certifications, etc., are expected from the incumbent.

Perform a rigorous screening and selection process

Different jobs demand different skills from the applicants. That said, to avoid the cost of bad hires, employers must resort to multiple tests, assessments, and interviews to thoroughly assess the potential candidate’s abilities. Adopting a laid-back attitude towards conducting interviews or screening procedures could prove costly later.

Conduct third-party background checks and collect references

Background checks carried out by professional vendors hired by the companies are the norm. These vendors collect all information on the potential candidate, including their personal details, education, work history, criminal checks, drug testing, and more. Besides, employers must collect details of the professional references of the applicant and speak to them before confirming the candidature.

Conclusion

The cost of bad hires could lead to considerable losses to the company as a whole. Check out the pointers outlined here and find the ideal fit for a job role.

About the Author

 BCjobs.ca is Western Canada’s largest job board, with majority of the jobs coming from Vancouver. For nearly 20 years, BC Jobs has connected job candidates with companies looking to add talent to their team. Here at BCJobs, we understand that looking for a job is difficult. To support our candidates, we recently launched a podcast to help you stand out during your job application. Listen to weekly episodes on our podcast to hear what recruiters are thinking and what companies look for when considering their next hire.