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The 7 Biggest Recruitment Mistakes that Most People Make Recruitment of Team Members is something that most people in business have to do and

yet most employers are not trained or experienced in doing it well. It’s all about people

which, after all, should be one of our most fundamental skills and focus, shouldn’t it?

From our experience we have listed the biggest and most commonly made mistakes that

employers make. We hope that this brief guide will give you the motivation and ideas to

become better recruiters, managers and leaders of people.

1. Your attitude:

This is a two way process! You are looking for passionate employees and you must

have an inspiring business that people want to come and work for!

Most people refer to their employees as staff. This implies, at some level, an “us

and them”. Start referring to them as “Team”. It is more inclusive and remember,

TEAM = Together Everyone Achieves More. The total will definitely be greater than

the sum of the parts when you become the employer that people want to work

for.

2. There isn’t an effective recruitment system or process in place:

People have systems or manuals in place to answer the phone, make the widget,

deliver the product etc. but because recruitment is not an everyday task there is

often not a system for this. So people do not know how to recruit effectively plus the

process is inconsistent and done differently each time. No wonder results are varied and

poor.

Document every step of your recruitment process. From defining the ideal

candidate to how you are going to market the position, the advert layouts, the

inbound application process, the interview processes, questions to ask, letters of

acceptance to write etc. etc. etc

3. Sifting through mountains of CV’s (or Resumes):

An effective recruitment system would avoid having applicants send CV’s to you

when applying for interview.

CV’s can’t tell you anything about the candidate’s attitude. It can only really tell you about

their qualifications and experiences, which really you should have stated as required in

the job advert. Surveys have also shown that there is a huge amount of fabrication done

on CV’s, so how much valid information do they really give you?

By all means have the candidate bring them to interview along with any other

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evidence of ability that you need.

Ploughing through dozens or even hundreds (which I have seen people do) of CV’s

to invite candidates to interview has to be the single biggest waste of your time.

4. “Knee Jerk Reactions”:

You lose a member of your Team or get that busy that you are struggling to cope. A

lot of people’s immediate reaction is to get someone quickly so, at best, if they do

have a process they are tempted to skip parts of it and jeopardise results.

Worse still if they don’t have a process, they get the first person they can think of

or is referred to them. If this is the next door neighbour’s brother’s daughter then

look out!

How many times have you heard “quick we just need to get bums on seats” ?!?!

Remember: “Less haste, more speed”

5. There is no ideal criteria:

How many people do you know that have recruited someone for their skills and

then had to let them go because of their poor attitude?

How clear is your checklist of the skills AND the attitude traits that you want from

your new team member?

If you don’t know, by now, how to solicit attitude traits at least you will get what

you focus on. If there is a full checklist then you are more likely to notice and

attract the people with the attitudes that you want.

6. You make it all about you and not about them:

People love to talk … especially about themselves! You, as the interviewer, need to

listen more than you talk. It is your duty to find out as much as you can about the

candidate (that is relevant!)

You have heard of the saying “2 ears & 1 mouth” you need to listen at least twice

as much as you talk. This is not about you ”selling the job or your business” by

being on your “monologue soapbox”!

People also like people that are like them. The last person that you probably want

to employ is someone like you. This comes back to your checklist and brings us to

the next point.

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7. Irrelevant and dumb questions are asked:

To avoid this you need to learn the art of asking powerful questions that solicit

attitude as well as experience and skills.

Questions such as “if you were an animal what sort of animal would you be?”(And

yes, these have been asked at interviews!) are not really relevant and I can’t think

of a psychological reason to ask these sort of questions.

8. Always Remember to under promise and over deliver: ☺

You need to be the go to employer. Start as you mean to go on and make the

recruitment process something amazing that your candidates have never

experienced before so that they are all clamouring for the job!

For those of you that really want to find those Team members that have the

right attitude as well as skill set and want to avoid these mistakes as well as

the many others that I have seen go to:

www.mysimplerecruitment.com

There you can buy the full detailed manual, with 8 short videos and all the

templates, scripts & documents that you need to implement what is probably

the most powerful recruitment process today!