6 Ways To Avoid Bad Hires
Have you ever calculated the cost of a bad hire?
According to our estimates, the true cost of replacing an employee can be roughly 3.5 x their annual salary.
That means replacing an employee with a $100,000 annual salary will cost you a whopping $350,000 in real costs if they leave in the first year.
The figure is eye-watering.
And it clearly can have a hugely negative impact on your business.
What can you do to avoid bad hires and make really great hires instead?
1.Use behavioural testing in the interview process
Consider evaluation strategies beyond the face-to-face interview. Behavioural assessment is particularly useful to assess a candidate’s suitability for a role based on the required behavioural characteristics, aptitude, and personality. When used correctly, behavioural assessment increases the chances of better hiring decisions, team cohesion, and employee retention.
You can use behavioural assessment tools such as McQuaig, Myers Briggs or put together your own list of behaviour-centric questions.
2.Take at least two references
You should speak to at least two previous employers and verify what the candidate has told you about their sales performance, tenure, ability to fit into a team and career progression. You need the comments to come from a credible source and delve deeper than a standard confirmation of dates and employment references.
3.Have a great story to tell
One of the biggest issues when trying to attract the best talent is that your story is just not appealing enough.
Sell your culture, your company, values, then the role.
More and more frequently, workplace culture places are the #1 driver for accepting a new job, outweighing the more traditionally attractive benefits like pay and bonuses. Workplace culture is clearly important, so should be used as a tool in your hiring process to attract great talent. And whilst we’re here, let’s make the advert copy the same with no more copy and pasted job descriptions – it doesn’t get great applicants.
4.Ask the candidate to meet other members of the team
Get the opinion of other people in the team. See what the consensus is on each candidate.
Two or three opinions are much more valuable than one.
Your current team members will also enjoy it as they feel included in the recruitment process and that their opinion is valued.
5. Ask for a 30/60/90 day plan
Any great hire will be able to write a 30/60/90 day plan for their early days at your company.
This will give you a great insight into their strategic thinking, organisational skills, attitude and aptitude.
6.Tap into the passive candidate market
Engage with a high-quality recruitment agency that specialises in your industry, to headhunt from the passive candidate market.
The best candidates DO NOT generally apply to online job adverts or are out there actively looking… They don’t need to. As they are usually well looked after by their current company as they are a high performer, your offer needs to be better than what they have already on the culture, values, role metrics listed earlier.
Finding & retaining the right lubricant talent
ABN Resource helps organisations like yours find and retain employees that can take your business to the next level. We saved one global lubricants company over £600k per annum with better retention rates, and all our hires last 40% longer than the industry average. If you would like to increase your best hires, please contact us at enquiries@abnresource.com
