The paradox of recruiting and building teams is that almost all of us think we can do it - and most often the opposite is true. Recruiting seems simple. After all, an excellent part of us at least once hired people for their teams and companies.
The question is - with what effect? Have these people found their way into our organization? How long did they stay? Did they develop as we would like? Did they achieve the goals assigned to their role?
Based on the experience of building more than 150 companies in Poland, Europe and the world, we must emphasize that - although, like most processes, recruitment is a repetitive process - recruiting is NOT EASY.
The good news is that you don't have to have an innate gift for recruiting, and recruiters don't use any textbook magic tricks to analyze Jung's dreams. Recruitment can be learned and you don't need special talent for this. What is needed is to adhere to proven practices and rules.
Why is it so important? How many traps and biases we can fall into is one thing. But the second thing is the weight that weighs on this process. According to a study by CB Insight (the so-called “autopsy” of more than 300 failed startups), 7 of the 20 main causes of collapse were related to human issues and organizational culture. In a similar study, Entrepreneur found that 23% of bankrupt companies attributed their failures to team-related issues.
So why, on average, does the Hiring Manager, that is, the main person in charge of recruitment, most often the future boss of the candidate, spend only 30 minutes defining the profile of the employee he is looking for? Would you spend the same amount on developing the persona of a marketing campaign with a budget of PLN 2 million?
In this article, we show you the 5 most common mistakes that almost all leaders, hiring for their team or company, make.
1. Undefined candidate profile
When approaching the topic of recruitment for the first time with our Partners, we very often hear from leaders the phrase: “Show me three candidates and I'll know who I'm looking for.”
Unfortunately, a good recruitment process starts just the opposite. That is, we define exactly who we are looking for and also what we want that person to achieve, as they will already be in our company. And later we look for the person who is closest to that defined persona. Why?
Imagine that you walk into a store and ask the seller for a red sweater. The seller does not ask additional questions and chooses from his offer any sweater that meets the only specified criterion. Is it a sweatshirt or a cardigan? If it is unbuttoned, does it have buttons or a zipper? Or is it golf? Does he have pockets? Does it have additional ornaments, prints?
This is why we cannot say that we are looking for a “good manager” or “someone who understands social media”. A clear definition of the candidate's persona should be carried out on similar principles as the determination of the sales persona - specifics are needed. What technical, and what inter- and intrapersonal competencies are unnecessary. We must have clearly defined, among other things, how we will check the cultural fit (and in general what this match consists of), as well as aspects that would seem impossible to verify, such as whether the candidate is an honest person. And the data shows that, on average, a hiring manager spends 30 minutes defining a profile for key positions in his organization (head, c-level up).
2. halo effect
Have you ever instinctively thought that someone who says “ex-Google”, “ex-Netflix” or “ex-meta” on their LinkedIn profile must be a real Cossack in what they do?
This is exactly how the halo effect works - the power of the employer brand affects the perception that we also have of current and former employees of that company.
We see the names of big brands on the resume and assume in advance that people who have worked in the largest, global brands, are certainly “A-players”. Could Google be wrong? The problem is that this person does not have to be a good candidate for our company at all.
We do not ask ourselves the question: Did this candidate contribute to the success of the team? What exactly was its impact on the project? What contribution did he make to the team? We do not know if these achievements are his or her merit or if they happened DESPITE this person's involvement in the project. So why do you think someone did the recruitment for you?
Moreover, even the best expert, very experienced and competent, cannot do without onboarding, that is, implementation to work in our organization. And it is the responsibility of the immediate supervisor to plan such an implementation. It is best, especially in the case of senior positions, to do it according to the 30/ 60/ 90 scheme, that is, a detailed roadmap, what the deployed person is expected to achieve and what decisions he or she is expected to be able to make after a month, two or three months in our company.
No reference check
Asking for written references from the employer has long since gone into disarray, but it should not surprise anyone (especially in the case of recruitment for key positions) to ask for people (e.g. former bosses) who can be asked for references.
Of course, the question “What kind of employee was John?” will not give us much, but skillfully leading the conversation to get a reference can make a really big difference in the final hiring decision. Questions need to be in-depth and detailed:
- How did he behave in situation X? (X - we describe a situation in which Jan could behave in a way that would be a guideline for us, e.g. the situation of giving him difficult feedback)
- Remember the moment when you had doubts about Jan's work - what was it?
- Have you ever thought “oh, how good that I have this man in the company” and when was that?
- What work environment do you think Jan would not find himself in?
It is surprising how consistent the opinions of former superiors are often. Not so long ago, we ran the recruitment process for the Founder's Associate - a position with a lot of confidence, because the founder's assistant very often has access to all the systems and data that the founder himself has access to. From every person who gives us references, we have heard in one way or another that - for the sake of history, let's call her Martha - that Martha is a person to rely on. “Going on vacation I was not afraid to leave her company”, “She did not process the contract without my signature, although the rest of the board pressed - and legally this agreement would be correct”, “There was no situation that I could not rely on it”, etc.
“Better a horse than nothing.”
We understand that protracted recruitment is frustrating. But the worst thing you can do is get tired and find that any candidate is better than none. Decide on “anyone” in order to finish this recruitment and have someone start “doing the things” you need to get done.
It is estimated that the cost of improper employment is 5 to 27 times higher from a person's salary. Bad hiring decisions not only waste time, money and resources, but also affect employee morale and pose a big risk to organizational culture.
And yes - a pile of piling up to-do tasks and the extra responsibilities of conducting recruitment are not the dream state of any of us. But you just need to pull out the calculator to know that definitely in such a case it is unprofitable to go to “rydza” from every angle:
- it is very likely that sooner or later we will fire such a person - so we will bear the costs of his salary, onboarding and offboarding
- we will waste the next months and all the hours we will spend to implement and help such a person at work
- we will have to start the recruitment process all over again - with even more mess created in the organization by hiring and firing the wrong person
- it is possible that the work that such a person will do will be of such poor quality that other people in the team will have to correct or do things for them
- The morale of the rest of the team will drop.
The recruitment process is not uniform
More than ⅓ of recruitments differ from each other for applicants for the same position. This is a serious mistake.
As we wrote above, the costs of the so-called mis-hiring are up to 27 times the salary of this employee. And the uneven recruitment process is the most common and at the same time the easiest to eliminate mistake that leads to mis-hiring.
All candidates should go through the same process. No “extra calle” with one candidate, no “extra tasks” to check something else. By conducting patchy recruitment, we open the door to many banal but harmful biases.
For example - it cannot be the case that we meet with one candidate live and with another remotely. People meeting face to face in 99% of cases will make a better impression on us.
Another example - if we meet with one candidate 5 times and with another 3, then we will probably hire the one with 5 meetings - a simple exposure effect works here.
By giving additional tasks or setting up additional meetings with the candidate, we really want to enchant reality - we do everything to hear from this person what we want to hear and to be able to hire them with a clear conscience.
Checklist, how to avoid biases in recruitment
To avoid biases, i.e. cognitive errors, in the recruitment process, follow the rules listed below - this way you will ensure the highest quality of the recruitment process and increase the chance of correctly verifying the candidate and hiring the right one:
RECRUITMENT BIAS CHECKLISTS
✅ Define in concrete terms who should be hired (in the context of technical skills, knowledge, inter- and intrapersonal characteristics).
✅ Together with the person responsible for the hiring decision, create requirements for each person, based on the requirements of the position for which they will apply - avoid relying on your own knowledge and expertise.
✅ Make sure that the recruiter conducts a short workshop for hiring managers about biases in recruitment.
✅ Make sure that all panelists and hiring managers are aware of the most common problems, heuristics and biases in the recruitment process.
✅ Ensure consistency of the process - each candidate for a given role should go through exactly the same recruitment, with the same number of recruitment interviews, panelists and a place of conversation (online or in the office).
✅ Prepare a consistent set of questions for each candidate included in the process.
✅ For recruitment tasks, make sure that the deadline is the same for all applicants;
✅ Make sure that none of the panelists have any private relationship with the candidates in the process (candidates we know from previous jobs or from the private environment must be treated exactly the same as those I do not know).
✅ Do not compare candidates to each other, only to the persona created during the planning.
✅ Create scorecards for panelists to evaluate only those elements that are critical to the role.
✅ Do not make decisions based on similarities or differences between you and the candidate.
✅ Involve all panelists in the evaluation session after the recruitment interview.
✅ Note: you can hire the first person we interviewed if they meet all the requirements: there is no need to wait for other candidates and compare them with each other (compare to persona);
Let me know if this material is useful to you! Can we help you build your team? Book a free consultation.
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