Avoid these 5 Common Hiring Mistakes
“You are perfectly designed to get the results you are getting” is an adage we continue to see when companies hiring playbooks are not optimized to ensure greater success in hiring. To help you get to a great hiring process, we thought it best to shape this article around avoiding a handful of the most common hiring process mistakes we help clients fix:
Mistake #1: Ignoring the larger context. Ensure your Functional Accountability Chart is up to date including the roles, responsibilities & KPIs required of all seats. Also, challenge the overall structure of the business, including reporting relationships. Finally, create a future version of the Functional Accountability Chart that is a year or so out into the future to help you visualize how current seats will change, and what additional seats are needed as the business grows. When the larger context is clear, then you can dive into the specifics of the role you need to hire next.
Mistake #2: Failing to clarify what you really need from that next hire. Too many job listings are overly general and often vague in terms of what success will look like in the role. A resource we have our clients complete is a Job Scorecard, from Who: The A Method for Hiring by Smart & Street. This Job Scorecard clarifies the purpose of the role, along with specific outcomes the person will need to deliver such as “Grow revenue from business clients from $10mil to $20mil by 12/31/2024”, and the competencies the person needs to possess, such as experience in B2B sales.
Mistake #3: Using “voodoo” hiring methods. Who: The A Method for Hiring contends that most hiring methods are ineffective, because they fail to truly evaluate if the candidate can actually do the job well. A number of such “voodoo” practices Smart & Street list include “The prosecutor” who tests a candidate's knowledge of things that are unrelated to the job and “The personality tester” who overly relies on personality/psychological tests that don’t predict job performance success.
Mistake #4: Not building a pipeline of candidates in advance. The ideal is to always be networking and connecting with potential candidates, even when you are not currently looking to hire.
Mistake #5: Asking the wrong questions. Who: The A Method for Hiring lays out 4 different kinds of interviews, along with great questions to ask at each stage of the hiring process. For instance, using “TORC” (Threat Of Reference Check) is a great way to ensure candidates are being fully truthful in their answers, because you are telling them you will follow up with the prior employer they are referencing in their answer.
If you are not getting the results you want from your hiring efforts, we strongly recommend checking out the hiring framework presented in Who: The A Method for Hiring and implementing those best practices in your business.
About the Author
Tom Barrett is a Leadership Team Coach based in Nashville, and is a Certified Scaling Up Coach™, Certified Pinnacle Business Guide, & former Certified EOS Implementer™. He helps his clients build scalable businesses by clarifying their vision, simplifying their strategy and achieving their goals one quarter at a time.
