Hiring Pitfalls – avoid these common mistakes

Hiring Pitfalls – avoid these common mistakes

by: Sharon LeBlanc Consultant: Training and Research

It is difficult to fill holes in existing teams by locating hard-to-find people who possess unique skills. Employers often fall into common hiring pitfalls like:

Unrealistic expectations: Employers want the “perfect” candidate who can do everything.

Naïve acceptance: An employer’s inability to look “around the corners” in blindly accepting information given on resumés and in the interview.

Being an I.Q. elitist: Many employers ignore E.I. (emotional intelligence), and only dwell in education and job experience. They ignore the emotional stability of the candidate.

Political appointments: Employers who reject valuable candidates for invalid reasons, and hire for other reasons than a person’s expertise.

Hiring the clone: Many employers want to hire candidates who resemble themselves in experience, education and interests.

Unstructured Interviews: When you don’t have a prepared list of questions, the conversation turns to unrelated topics such as sports and mutual acquaintances.

Incomplete reference checks: Are you sure you are asking the right questions? to the right people? legally?

Defective delegation: If you don’t do your due diligence for the interview, and you let someone else do the work for you (like write the job description), you don’t know what skills you’re looking for.

Sound familiar?…