6 WAYS TO EXPERIENCE FREEDOM FROM BAD HIRES

Yesterday was Independence Day, so writing a blog post about freedom is quite timely. And no organization wants to make a bad hire. So this is a great time to put these two things together!
We’ve touched upon the topic of bad hires in this blog previously:
“6 Ways a Bad Hire Can Negatively Affect Your Company”
“5 Steps for Addressing a Bad Hire”
However, both of these blog posts discuss events that take place after a bad hire has been made. The important question is this one: what can you do to prevent a bad hire in the first place?
And that’s the question that we’re going to answer with this blog post. Below are five ways to experience freedom from bad hires:
#1—Be specific about your needs for the position.
In order to enjoy a better fit in terms of a new employee, you need to take a more targeted approach. In other words, you should deal in specifics and not generalities. To get exactly what you want, you must know exactly what you want. With that in mind, you should know what you want from your new employee in terms of the following:
Hard skills
Soft skills
Training and/or experience
Personality and other intangible attributes
When you have a better idea of who you want for the position, you increase your chances of actually hiring that person.
#2—Draw from a deeper talent pool.
Hiring the best candidate from a shallow and largely unqualified talent pool doesn’t really help that much. What you want to do is hire the best candidate from a deep talent pool full of qualified individuals. This might mean sourcing candidates from a number of different places, including using a staffing firm. Because if the way you’ve been doing it to this point is not getting the job done, then it’s time to try something new and different. (“If you do what you’ve always done, then you’ll get what you’ve always got.”)
#3—Write the best job description you possibly can.
This one goes hand-in-hand with #1 on our list. That’s because once you know exactly what you want, you must be able to articulate that with a well-written job description. Ideally, your job description will help “weed out” candidates who are not qualified for the position. When you get bogged down with unqualified candidates, that slows the whole process and it also increases the likelihood that you’ll hire one of those unqualified candidates.
#4—Include multiple people in the interview process.
When only one or two people interview candidates, then the decision-making process is only influenced by one or two people. No matter how smart that person or those people are, more input helps to balance the process and the final outcome. Include those people who will interact with the new employee on a regular basis. Different people bring different strengths to the interview process, and leveraging those strengths is an intelligent hiring strategy.
#5—Consider the entire experience.
Yes, the face-to-face interview is important (as we just discussed in #4), but the hiring decision does not rest solely upon that. But what about your entire experience with them? How well do they communicate, not only in person, but also over the telephone and via email? Do they do what they say they will do? Do they become easily frustrated? Do they act one way with a person, but then act another way with somebody else?
#6—Trust your instincts.
This is also known as “going with your gut.” If you’ve been in the hiring game for any length of time, you’ve probably honed some instincts. It would serve you well to listen to those instincts. Even if a person “looks good on paper” and appears to interview well, sometimes you get a nagging feeling about them. A feeling that something isn’t quite right. You know your company and you know what works well for it. So “go with your gut” . . . and trust your instincts.