17 Common Recruiting Mistakes (and How to Avoid Them)

December 31, 2011, by HR à la carte | Recruitment

We all know the reward of making the right hiring choice: a happy, productive, and engaged workforce. But what happens when we make the wrong choice?

This guide aims to show you exactly what’s at stake in making the right hire, the most common recruiting mistakes, and how to avoid these mistakes to help you make the perfect hire every time.

Key takeaways TL;DR

You’ll learn:

• The possible financial, team, morale, reputational, and legal costs of poor recruiting choices
• How you can expect your recruiting to improve by avoiding the most common pitfalls
• The eight stages of recruitment and the most common mistakes in each one
• The info, resources, and practices you’ll need to avoid these mistakes

How recruitment mistakes cost you

Poor selection decisions cost the company money in:

• Employee ineffectiveness: The wrong choice likely won’t result in a very productive day-to-day.
• Wasted training time and costs: Hiring the wrong person doesn’t just affect the business and that person, it affects everyone involved in training them too.
• Expense of replacement hiring: Poor hiring decisions can cost a company as much as two to three times that employee's annual compensation package (this includes not only base salary but commission and bonus).
• Efficiency loss while replacement is trained: Projections and plans can be thrown out of whack due to the efficiency loss while hiring a replacement.
• Deterioration of company image and reputation: The more hiring mistakes happen, the more you can expect your employer brand and reputation to take a hit, which can itself make hiring harder.
• Defense of legal challenges: More severe hiring mistakes can open the door to legal problems, resulting in all sorts of stress and financial costs.

However, by avoiding these mistakes with a well-designed recruiting process, you:

• Ensure the right person is hired into the right position every time.
• Ensure employees perceive the process to be fair, which in turn impacts employee morale, retention, quality and productivity of work and ultimately, company profitability.
• Ensure compliance with applicable federal, provincial, and Canadian Human Rights requirements as well as company diversity initiatives, thus reducing legal exposure.

So what does a well-designed recruiting process look like?

What are the 8 stages of recruitment?

From start to finish, an effective recruiting process consists of the following stages:

1. Defining the job and creating the job description
2. Creating a job posting based on the description and geared to the target candidate group
3. Sourcing candidates for the role
4. Screening candidates against a set of established criteria
5. Establishing a set of behaviourally based interview questions and interviewing each candidate using the same set of questions
6. Based on the data collected in the interviews, selecting a top candidate
7. Conducting reference checks
8. Making an offer

Knowing that these stages lie ahead of you, let’s look at what common mistakes can happen in each stage—and how to avoid them.

What are the most common errors in each recruitment stage?

Defining the job and creating the job description

Not working with a clear job description

Recruiting is rarely a one-person job; a clear internal job description keeps everyone on the same page—when dealing with each other and candidates—from start to finish.

A clear, effective job description outlines the:

• purpose and objectives of the role
• essential functions of the role
• skills, knowledge, and abilities needed in order to perform the role effectively

Not defining a consistent candidate assessment plan

By defining upfront how you plan to assess all candidates, you save yourself the work of figuring out how to assess each candidate down the road (fairly assessing each candidate also becomes easier).

This means defining your process for reviewing résumés, how many interview stages you plan to put candidates through, which tests or assignments you plan to give, interview questions you plan to ask, and so on; the more detailed you can get, the better.

Creating a job posting based on the description and geared to the target candidate group

Not treating recruiting like marketing

Marketing a job is the same as marketing an apartment is the same as marketing a car; you need to get your product (job) in front of likely customers (candidates) with information (job posting) that will hopefully persuade them to buy (apply).

Everything from the information you include (and where it’s positioned in your post) to the perks you offer to the tone of the language you use needs to be tailored to the candidates you’re looking to attract. Also, no boilerplates: original job postings show you care and help you stand out from the many companies who do use them.

For example, you might want to emphasise close to the top of your posting the major challenges of the role when marketing to engineering candidates, or compensation and opportunities for growth when marketing to sales candidates.

Learn more about writing effective, SEO-optimised job postings.

Being inaccurate or untruthful in your job description

A significant proportion of turnover during the first six months of employment is due to the candidate not understanding the content of the job before being hired.

To minimise these turnovers, provide an accurate, fact-checked, non-boiler-plate job description complete with the following sections:

• About the Company
• About the Opportunity
• Responsibilities of the Role (with time percentage breakdowns)
• Essential Skills and Qualifications Required for the Role
• Desired Skills and Qualifications for the Role

Sourcing candidates for the role

Not recruiting internally

One area that often gets neglected when sourcing candidates is your company itself. Other than simply being another candidate pool to tap into, those who apply internally already understand your company, culture, and how things are done, which means they can often hit the ground running better than external applicants.

Even if you think no one within your company is qualified, it’s still good practice to post your job internally; your employees will appreciate the courtesy of doing so, it supports an open and transparent culture, and you may have employees come forward to talk about how they can develop themselves for certain roles you post in the future.

Not being proactive in attracting candidates

Posting on job sites is a great start, and that may be enough to attract the candidates you want, but to cut through the noise, it’s best to be proactive when advertising your roles.

This can take the form of asking recruiters[1] on your team to post your open roles to their personal LinkedIn profiles, reaching out to potential candidates directly (and following up if they don’t respond), asking employees to leave company reviews on employer review sites (i.e. Glassdoor), anything else that increases the chances of candidates seeing and applying to your roles.

Not tapping into all possible talent pools

You’re likely already posting to the popular job sites, but are you taking advantage of the lesser-known or lesser-used ones? Even if there is less traffic, the fact that fewer employers are advertising on these sites makes it easier to stand out to candidates.

For example, TikTok’s large early careers talent pool and ability to be very targeted in your job ads make it any recruiter’s best friend. Similarly, interest groups (i.e. Women in Engineering) on platforms like Facebook or Discord are often untapped by recruiters.

Screening candidates against a set of established criteria

Not considering unconscious bias

Even the best-intentioned people are affected by unconscious bias, and this bias can get in the way of hiring effectively and fairly.

One way to avoid this is to assess applicants without their names, considering only their education, work experience, skills, and other factors necessary to gauge their qualification.

Being too rigid in your idea of the perfect candidate

It can be tempting to hold off on a decision in hopes that the perfect candidates will walk through the door. However, this perfect candidate rarely exists, and fixating too much on finding them can cause you to miss other, perfectly qualified candidates.

Rather, it’s best to screen with a wider bracket and a more flexible definition of what a qualified candidate looks like, which may end up being someone you didn’t even consider in the first place.

Placing education and experience before skills

While education and experience can give you an idea of how a candidate might perform in a role, what matters most is their demonstrated ability to perform the role.

This is where a short skill test can help you quickly narrow down qualified candidates. This test can be part of your initial application process but shouldn’t take any longer than it would to write a cover letter; excessively long tests or assignments upfront can feel like unpaid work and deter candidates from applying in the first place. 

Prioritising culture fit over culture add

Hiring people who seem to be a good culture fit can be helpful in building teams that work well together, but equally as important is building teams with diverse perspectives.

In fact, studies show that only do diverse teams perform better financially but they also make employers more attractive to candidates. So, instead of focusing on culture fit, consider focusing more on culture add.

Being overly swayed by the interview

The interview carries a lot of weight in the application selection process, so much so that it can push out other, equally important determining factors.

Even if you get along with someone well in an interview, it’s still important to consider everything they bring together holistically. A great conversation can make you feel amazing about their potential, but their skills, portfolio, and proven ability need to also be considered for a truly accurate determination.

Not asking useful interview questions

Your questions and phrasing can make or break a successful interview, meaning one that gives you an accurate look into your candidate. 

Asking shallow, predictable, or leading questions is likely to give you canned or unhelpful answers. Similarly, asking different questions to each candidate will make it hard to fairly compare them. Instead, focus on behaviourally-based interview questions and interview each candidate using the same set of questions.

Based on the data collected in the interviews, selecting a top candidate

Letting personal reasons get in the way of hiring the best candidate

Similar to unconscious bias, ego or insecurity can sometimes creep its way into the selection process, especially if the person you’re hiring relates to your area or team. This can lead to certain candidates losing out, despite being the best qualified for the job.

As you go through your selection process, remember you’re trying to do what’s best for your company: the higher quality and more capable your team becomes, the more knowledge is shared, the better people perform, and the more you all rise with the tide.

Choosing too quickly

The reality is that speed is a factor when hiring, especially when dealing with in-demand candidates, or candidates considering multiple offers. But rushing too fast can lead you to make less-than-perfect decisions that could cost you down the road.

This is where communication is key. Make it clear to candidates at every step along the way (not just selection but starting at the application) when they can expect to hear from you. For example, let them know: “We’ll ask for references at this date”, “We’ll let you know our decision at this date”, and so on. This constant communication keeps them warm as you take the time you need to choose the best candidate.

Conducting reference checks

Giving references too much weight

Like with any other part of the selection process, references are only one piece of the puzzle; if a candidate excelled in their initial application, skill tests, and interviews, these feats shouldn’t suddenly be completely outweighed by their references.

A more holistic assessment will give you a more accurate idea of a candidate’s ability to perform in a certain role. Even in cases where a reference paints a slightly different picture than what a candidate originally painted for you, clarifying with the candidate is a better approach than dropping them completely.

Making an offer

Not following up a verbal offer with a written offer soon enough

When you’re ready to decide, it’s time to make a verbal offer with a phone call or in-person meeting. But waiting too long between this verbal offer and the written offer can quickly wane confidence and make the candidate feel like they’re being toyed with.

Instead, before even giving the verbal offer, have all the main clauses of your offer (compensation, benefits, etc.) in an email ready to send, and let the candidate know when they can expect their full written offer. If they want to make changes to the written offer, be clear about when they can expect the revised offer.

FAQs

How can I assess a candidate's cultural fit/add within my organisation during the recruitment process?

You can assess a candidate’s cultural fit/add by asking about their values, work style, and preferred work environment during interviews. Additionally, consider involving team members in the interview process to gauge compatibility with the existing team culture.

How can I minimise the impact of recruitment mistakes on my company's reputation?

To minimise the impact of recruitment mistakes on your company’s reputation, communicate transparently and quickly with candidates throughout the process about feedback, decisions, and next steps. Also take steps on employer review sites and social media to stay part of the narrative, such as encouraging current employees to share positive experiences and responding to both positive and negative reviews and comments.

How can I stay updated on evolving recruitment best practices and trends to avoid common mistakes?

To stay updated on recruitment best practices and trends, consider attending industry conferences, webinars, and networking events. You can also follow reputable HR and recruitment publications, newsletters, and thought leaders on LinkedIn. And don’t neglect TikTok! Recruitment videos are a budding lane on the platform and they’re an easy way to keep your finger on the pulse, often more effectively than on LinkedIn.

When should I look for help with recruitment?

By being aware of these common mistakes, you instantly give yourself a competitive edge on your way to making the perfect hire.

But as with any people-centred business, it’s difficult to account for all possible mistakes in recruitment. If you’re doing what you can with what you have and still struggling to meet your goals, it might be time for some help.

For help recruiting effectively, fairly, and affordably, check out our Recruitment Toolkit, or call us at 1-888-919-7422.