Blog

19/02/2021

By Chris Andrews – Director and Head of Advisory

The problem

Hiring people is an essential part of professional life, yet it doesn’t always work out the way we wanted. At first glance, it can seem an easy task – in reality, there is a jungle of pitfalls waiting for the unready (or just plain busy) hiring manager.

But why?

There is so much to consider as a hiring Manager; what qualifications does the candidate need, do they have the relevant experience, do their salary expectations suit, will they fit the company culture…The hiring process is not linear and can never be viewed as a process of merely putting ticks in boxes.

At a basic level, the human being you are hiring is a contributor or detractor to your company’s future; every employee plays a role in achieving the next company milestone.

Now, apart from the obvious consequences of a poor hire – the direct time and money lost in repeating a process – there are several, less obvious but equally imperative reasons you should take the time to hire correctly (the first time!)

1.Loss of trust in your decision making. The trust between managers and employees goes far deeper than confidentiality. With one, or many incorrect hires, you run the risk of provoking a feeling of unease between staff with Management’s decision-making abilities. Having a new colleague start – even a good one – can be jolting and disrupting to current employees.

2. Erosion of collaboration. Shared folders, historic emails, sales figures, security codes… you can never count on how much private company information an employee has retained, and for most of us, it is simply a cost of doing business. However, over time poor hiring decisions have been shown to cause employees to collaborate less and share information less willingly – all detrimental to the company development.  In short – the more employees trust your hiring choice, the more they are likely to invest in them.

3. Damage to existing relationships. A wrong hire can strain the relationships between existing employees. Most of us have had to shoulder the work-load of an ex-employee and pick up the slack from the errors they may have made. This is stressful and affects morale. Your business only thrives when your employees are happy at work.

4. The one that got away. Only one person is successful in getting the job. If you hired the wrong person, you may have missed the right one. Remember that great candidates don’t stay on the market long, so you run the risk of losing them completely. And have you ever seen a house on the market for a long time? There must be something wrong with it, correct? In the same way, seeing your role being readvertised may be enough to turn off future applicants, including maybe your ideal hire.

So, to conclude

Hiring the wrong person can cost you more than just money, just as hiring the right can put your business on track to achieve some amazing things. Stone Recruitment are committed to helping businesses get better at hiring through our embedded recruitment service.

Talk to us today to see how see how we can save you money and share our expertise, networks and scalable resources to take the stress out of your hiring.