January 9, 2020

Always Take Your Time When Hiring

If you’re a new business, then it can be hard to find the best talent or the right people for open positions at your company. However, you should always look for the best and settle for nothing else; after all, the survival and growth of your business depend on who you hire.

Considering the number of people graduating out of college today, it should be easy to find the right or most suitable candidate for an open position at your company, right? Wrong! While there will be many people graduating from college with a degree relevant to your job listing, only a few will have the ability and skill to take your business forward. Keep in mind, not all skilled or appropriate candidates would have you as their first choice and you’d have to compete with other companies for them.

By giving you the above information, we are not trying to scare or demotivate you or your HR team. Instead, we are trying to make the point that you may not find the ‘ideal’ candidate as quickly as you think.

Yes, if you’re extremely lucky, then the first candidate that walks into the interview room could tick all the boxes and be just the employee you’re looking for. However, this very rarely happens so don’t count on it. Instead, you should be willing to take your time when hiring and not rush into making a decision; 9 out 10 times, this will backfire.

Slow and Steady Wins You the Jackpot

One of our clients shared with us their story of how it took them six months to fill four open positions at their company. Our client is not a new or small business; additionally, they have a good reputation in their industry. So, they had no trouble winning interest from people who met the basic criteria for the open positions. In fact, they received over a thousand applications for each of the open positions during the six months it took to fill them.

During these six months, our client conducted hundreds of interviews, conducted many several in-person screenings, and sent out plenty of rejection emails, all to find the most qualified candidates for the open positions. The result? The company increased its annual revenues by 200% after hiring these four candidates.

All the time spent vetting applications and candidates and conducting interviews and in-person screenings paid off. Six months seems like a long time but it is nothing compared to the return on investment (ROI) that our client got a year after finally making the hires.

Had they rushed into making a hiring decision just so they could fill the vacant positions quickly, they most probably would not have enjoyed the growth that they did. Maybe six months is too long for you to hire someone and we understand that. The point is that you should not rush into hiring people, as this often leads to bad hiring decisions that affect your bottom line.

Reasons to Hire Slow

Even in desperate times, you should stay calm and not rush into making hiring decisions. You should always look for people who can add value to your business; you won’t be getting them if you hire in a rush. They are several reasons why taking your time to hire is better than making hiring decisions in a rush. Following are some of them:

1.     Resumes Do Not Tell the Whole Story

Most people lie and exaggerate about their career or accomplishments in their resume just to make themselves look better to a potential employer. Unfortunately, many hiring managers believe the details in the resume to be true, with thoughts immediately going towards hiring.

Since they are adamant about hiring the applicant with an embellished resume, such hiring managers don’t ask too many pressing questions in the interview. They even allow the candidate to miss several in-person screenings. Ultimately, the company ends up with an employee who has far less skills or experience than mentioned in their resume. What is the outcome of this? Being stuck with an employee who is a burden on the company’s finances and makes little to no contributions to the bottom line.

Therefore, you should always conduct thorough interviews and do rigorous pre-screening before deciding to hire someone, even if the process takes an entire month.

2.     Get Multiple People Involved in the Process

While this does not apply to every company or business team out there, it is always good to get the opinion about the candidate from their potential team members. After all, they will have to work with this person so finding out if they believe the candidate to be a good fit for the team or not is important. This is especially important when hiring for a team with members that work cohesively to produce the final product.

There are multiple ways to get the opinions of the candidate’s potential team members including emailing the candidate’s resume to the entire team, sharing an audio/video clip of their interview, or discussing their skills or personality characteristics with the team members.

3.     Test the Patience of the Candidates

One of the most important qualities of any successful professional is that they can stay patient and calm under all situations. The best way to discover this before hiring a candidate is to make the hiring process incredibly slow. While this can be strenuous for you and the candidate, it will allow you to test the patience of the potential employee. If they show patience in the hiring process, then there’s a good chance that this is their nature and you can count on them in tough times.

These are just a few of the many reasons you should always take your time when hiring. It will serve you well.

 

by Bobby J Davidson

We love our company and we love what we do.  Check out the ‘Why Percento‘ page to learn more: Love of Technology and Business!  As the President of Percento Technologies International, I provide day-to-day leadership to the company’s senior management and I am personally involved in the strategy, business development and sales activities of the firm.

The company was founded in 1999 with the purpose of providing a one call source for organizations in need of Enterprise IT Consulting and Management.  We also provide a line of products in the boutique Cloud Server space with a touch of high-end website strategy consulting and design services.   We personalizes the IT Service experience with a team approach, working with clients from diverse sectors of industry, including energy services, financial, legal, entertainment, healthcare, hospitality, retail and general and/or corporate business.  percentotech.com/contact