Every organization strives for successful hiring. The talent management teams dig deeper into the candidate’s resume and their professional background to find the best fit for the organization. However, even after having a clear refined hiring strategy in place, many of them fail at finding the right person to do a particular job. Imagine onboarding a new member, only to replace them after 6 months of probation is frustrating.

Bad hiring is not uncommon. Even the most experienced talent managers are not able to prevent the company from hiring the wrong candidate. According to the estimates of a recent survey, more than 40% of companies surveyed spent a whopping of $25000 on a bad hire, while the other 25% revealed that bad hiring cost them more than $50,000 in the previous year. 

It is imperative to understand, why do companies spend money on hiring a candidate that does not deliver results? Any employee who influences the productivity, performance, and retention of the other team members can simply be considered as a bad hire. Moreover, they tend to result in delayed company goals and are likely to make an early exit. 

People are viewed as the most valuable assets of a company. They cannot be overlooked or neglected as they are the frontrunners in delivering customer experience. During the hiring process, talent management teams make as many powerful strategies as possible to expand the company’s operations. Still, there are pitfalls in those practices that lead to wrong candidate selection. 

Focusing on speed over quality

Speed in the hiring process leads to poor decisions. According to the National Business Research Institute (based in Dallas, Texas), 43% of the companies surveyed believed that rushing to fill the vacancy is the biggest cause of poor hiring. The company’s desire to onboard new employees and not focusing on finding a candidate with the right set of competencies cost them high. The other main reasons could be the workload on other people due to the shortage of staff; people keen on handing over their responsibilities while on the exit period, and to avoid the risk of losing the staff budget. 

Organizations need to take ample time to clearly define the role and find the right fit for it. Setting a realistic timeline in analysing the needs of the business and matching them with the candidate's skills can help improve the process. It creates a perfect balance between the speed of recruiting and quality, and results in onboarding quality talent. 

Unplanned onboarding 

The process of onboarding has a huge impact on the candidate settling in the organization. The period of interviewing and finally onboarding the candidate is long. After hiring, it can take a month or two for the candidate to join the organization. Another month goes into the official documentation and onboarding process. This is the period when a candidate is likely to receive more offers in the industry other than yours. It is critically important for talent managers to be actively in touch with the candidate that helps in preparing them in the onboarding process. Communication with them before their joining is better than listening to their concerns during the resignation. 

Additionally, it involves properly planned briefing of the candidate during the interview as well as the onboarding process. A detailed job description, a positive overview of the company, special employee programs, introduction to fellow workers, and sharing every other information which could be important for the candidate should be shared as part of the onboarding process. This helps in establishing a clear communication link right from the initial stage of hiring and making informed decisions without wasting the resources. 

Irrelevant performance data

In today’s time, gathering performance data is not challenging. There are specific tools and other parameters that help the talent managers and leaders in collecting data of each member. With the abundance of data availability, the majority of companies skip identifying the right data that could accurately measure the performance of an individual in realising business goals and delivering the desired results. 

When a candidate joins an organization, it should be a clear strategy for the talent manager to combine different data sets and sources to measure their performance accurately. Moreover, it is also significant to understand that measuring performance should not be solely dependent upon analysing the numbers, it could also include the value that the employee has created at the workplace. 

The market landscape is constantly changing. What’s required today is not necessarily going to be required after a few months. Staying focused to make a dynamic yet refined recruitment strategy along with a planned onboarding and performance assessment can contribute immensely to retaining the workforce.