Consequences of Bad Hiring
Famously, even Steve Jobs made a wrong hire that caused him to be ousted from the company he founded. A hiring mistake that was gravely expensive. But not every consequence of bad employment is this dramatic. More often, it is silently chipping away at the efficiency of your company.
But that doesn’t have to be you. Hiring the right candidate can put your company on the fast track to success. And isn’t that the goal? Scaling up, growing and succeeding?
One of the first important factors of becoming an industry-dominating business is to ensure you have the right people working with the vision that aligns with yours. In an insightful book for business owners, Startups & MNCs alike, on Scaling Up by Verne Harnish, the author focuses on four major decision areas every company must get right, and the first one being – People.
From a lack of requisite skills to a personality mismatch, there are several reasons why someone may not be a good choice for a job. They start displaying some consistent patterns; for example, missing deadlines, conflict with colleagues, disregarding company missions and values and doing the bare minimum at work. The costs typically include reduced productivity, increased opportunity costs, employee disengagement and turnover, and increased interdepartmental conflict.
Let's look at some of the pitfalls
Effects on productivity & morale
Hiring a bad fit lacking the necessary skills has the potential to leave good employees with the burden of damage control, whether it’s extra work or redoing work that wasn’t correctly done the first time. When a disengaged hire doesn’t pull their weight, good employees get stretched thin making up for it. This impacts their performance, productivity, and ability to keep appointments, reach targets, and maintain standards. If employees are doing more to cover for a struggling colleague without additional compensation, it can cause tension and potential conflict. Putting you at risk of losing your top performers. These are prime conditions for job dissatisfaction, employee disengagement, and overall lack of morale.
Cost of replacement
Chances are, before letting go of the employee, you have tried to resolve the issue by focused feedback, reassigning them to a different department that is more befitting, or trying to find workable alternatives. But this doesn’t always work. Sometimes a bad hire, is simply a bad hire. You have to cut your losses. Identify both the current and future expenses of keeping the wrong hire. And compare those results with the cost of replacement and onboarding of a new candidate.
Reputation damage
It takes one poorly chosen employee to invalidate all the years spent in building brand credibility & reputation. The employee in a customer-facing position directly impacts how your audience views your company and possibly even drive them straight to your competitor. The damage is just as severe irrespective of the role they hold.
Thanks to the internet, there’s no escaping bad reviews. Unpleasant working experience alongside bad hires may drive dissatisfied employees to leave negative reviews on your Glassdoor profile, deterring candidates from applying at your firm which affects your future hiring opportunities. Bad hiring decisions can also cause staff to doubt the management’s judgment and lose faith in company leaders. The ripple effect from hiring wrongly taints your professional image, harming the brand over time.
How to avoid making the wrong choice?
One of the top reasons for making poor hiring decisions is the rush to fill vacant roles. The urgency stems from a strained work environment that is understaffed. It is vital to take the time to attract, vet, interview the applicants but this luxury of time is improbable.
Hiring the right talent is more important than just filling the seat. This is where hiring experts like Anzy Global can assist in swiftly identifying the best person, without compromising on the core competencies.
Not having sufficient talent intelligence also causes mistakes in hiring. You ought to take the time to determine what makes a top candidate. What skills and characteristics are you looking for? What attitude best suits your company culture? What attributes do your top performers already embody? A defined employee persona and job description can attract the right people and filter out disruptive personalities.
A CV can only reveal so much. Relying solely on CVs and reference checks are not always fail-safe. To ensure a successful hire, there is a need for insights into the candidate’s aspirations, intentions, goals, their psychological assessment, personality and culture match. This is where Anzy Global can administer pre-employment personality checks and assess the true potential of your prospective hires.
Final thoughts
People are discovering the non-traditional ways of working owing to the pandemic and are less likely to be wedded to one job. At the onset of 2022, it is predicted that employees will continue to find ways to customise their own working lives and career experiences. Therefore, it is imperative that companies spend time developing the right recruitment strategy to attract and retain the right people.
Whether it’s the hunt for senior executives or team members, recruitment is tedious, and you have a company to run. What do you do?
If you don’t have the time and resources to identify and evaluate candidates, the easiest way is to get help! Hiring recruiters or partnering with a recruitment agency is also an effective way to lure employed candidates who are not actively looking for a new job.
The cost of a bad hire can encompass everything from a financial loss to a bad reputation. Anzy Global, with its industry knowledge and superior hiring techniques, can help you circumvent this costly mistake by creating job baselines, personality profiles, identifying & vetting top talents, and preparing effective, revealing interview questions.
As Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates said: “Hire right, because the penalties of hiring wrong are huge.”
