The epidemic of bad hiring is pervasive, and your in-house hiring managers, through no fault of their own, might be the cause.
According to research from Brandon Hall Group, a research and advisory services firm specializing in human capital management, 95 percent of businesses cop to making at least one bad hiring decision every year. With the new year right around the corner, have you given any thought to who your first bad hire of 2018 will be? Or are you crossing your fingers that you’ll be the one business in 20 that will hire unscathed?
Try as they might, the cards are really stacked against hiring managers:
1. Hiring managers have other jobs to do
Chances are good that your hiring manager isn’t just a hiring manager.
His or her other duties might include tasks usually assigned to a human resources administrator or director, which vary from ensuring compensation rolls out in time, updating workers on current events via intranet, performing employee reviews, managing retirement plans and health care plans and life insurance plans, etc. Or maybe he or she oversees a department in need of new blood, in a role completely separate from HR.
In short, as important as hiring is – to engagement, to productivity, to the bottom line – who’s to say it’s more important than business as usual?
2. Hiring managers are too entrenched in what they do
If you’ve ever struggled to find work, you’ve no doubt been slapped in the face by this hard truth about applying and interviewing: Job-searching is a job unto itself.
In a similar sense, hiring is equally all-consuming. Although inside interviews are a good start, it’s not enough to approach recruitment that way. Would you hire a new web developer based on the same credentials of the last web developer you hired three years ago? You might if you don’t have the time or patience to examine the job market in your immediate area and identify trends affecting the job you’re hiring for.
Even if your in-house hiring manager has availability to talk with employees and root out internal gaps, that’s not the same as uncovering something new that a highly qualified candidate pool can offer. That kind of exploration is (say it with me) a job unto itself.
3. Hiring managers can’t keep recruitment afloat in the long term
Strategic hiring means not interviewing every candidate who knocks on your door. In certain cases, it means throwing the door knocker in the trash.
Passive hiring might have scored some companies a few great employees back when unemployment was high, but these days the job market is a seller’s market. The best candidates understand their value and will gravitate toward the businesses that court them most effectively. What does that mean for hiring managers? Recruitment doesn’t end once people start responding to your job post. That’s when your curated candidate experience begins, a balancing act that can take weeks to complete.
Don’t take this the wrong way. Hiring managers are a hard-working bunch and an essential part of recruitment. But because of increased job market competition, many businesses require a recruitment partner to help shoulder the burden and alleviate risk. At EBC Associates, our team of recruitment specialists collaborates with hiring managers and HR administrators to understand what’s needed internally. Then we leverage our industry-specific recruitment knowledge to tap into the finest candidates. Contact us today for more information.