High turnover is both expensive and time consuming, which is why retention is key for businesses. There are many potential causes of high turnover, including poor hiring decisions.
To avoid hiring the wrong employees and increasing turnover, avoid making these six hiring mistakes.
1. Not Knowing What You Want
To hire long term employees, you need to know what you want. Without having a clear idea of your ideal candidates, it’s nearly impossible to find the right people. Before you start interviewing anyone, make sure you have a plan.
Consider the daily duties your ideal candidates will need to perform and the experience they’ll need in order to perform well. Think about all the skills candidates will need to excel. After you’ve created a profile of your ideal candidate, you can start an informed search for new employees.
2. Not Checking References
As many as 40 percent of resumes contain fabrications. While some fabrications are minor (like changing employment dates to hide small gaps), others are much more serious. Some employees create fake job titles for themselves or claim to have skills or experiences they don’t actually have.
Not checking references is one of the more serious hiring mistakes. By talking to an employee’s past supervisors and managers, you can catch some of these fabrications. Instead of hiring dishonest employees and needing to terminate them later, you can keep looking to find the right employees.
3. Forgetting about Soft Skills
During the hiring process, it’s easy to focus on hard skills. These are the specific and teachable skills employees have learned at school or in past jobs. Think of skills like expertise in a certain software program or proficiency in a foreign language. However, soft skills are just as important.
Soft skills are often thought of as personality traits and include skills like communication or teamwork. Candidates could have the perfect mix of hard skills, but without the right soft skills, they could perform poorly in their roles. Evaluate candidates’ soft skills during the interview process to filter candidates who aren’t a good fit.
4. Not Highlighting Your Company Culture
Every company has its own culture. Some candidates will fit in well with the existing culture, while others won’t. To boost retention, it’s important to hire candidates from the former group. To do this, remember to highlight your company culture during interviews.
During interviews, talk about the company’s mission, the work environment, and the general expectations within the company. Employees who don’t like the culture will know about the mismatch ahead of time and can choose to work somewhere else.
5. Rushing the Hiring Process
When you’re short-staffed, it’s tempting to hire someone as fast as possible. After all, isn’t it better to have a mediocre employee than to leave the role open? Unfortunately, it’s not so easy. When you rush the hiring process, you can hire someone who doesn’t meet your needs. Later, they could leave or you could need to terminate them, which puts you right back where you started.
In the long run, it’s better to slow down and try to hire the right person the first time. Be patient; the right candidate will come along.
6. Being Too Narrow in Your Search
If you’re only using one job board to find candidates or if you’re only seeking out local candidates you could be missing out on ideal employees.
To broaden your field of candidates, explore all your options. Post ads on multiple job boards, ask employees for referrals, and for more help, work with a staffing agency.
By avoiding these six hiring mistakes, you can reduce turnover and retain your employees. If you’re too busy to run your own hiring process, don’t hesitate to hire a staffing agency. The agency can help you hire the right people for your business.
