“When people do work that suits them, where they shine and they’re connected to their power source, the work is better and the wins are bigger.” – Liz Ryan
When selecting an excellent candidate, look beyond their resume and cover letter. Holistic hiring not only accounts for an individual’s skills and personality, but also their interests.
Imagine someone who’s skilled in their field, but not passionate about it. They’ll produce flawless work that’s been seen hundreds of times before—with no originality.
Choosing the right candidate, however, can transform your business, as they’re conducive to its growth, innovation, and culture.
To help you find and select the best applicant, we’ll explore the importance of making the right hiring decisions and offer actionable tips that ensure your organization rakes in the best talent.
Why hire the right person?
Hiring the right person can impact various organizational aspects, including ones such as:
Cultural fit
To properly integrate themselves into your company, new hires must align themselves with its values and culture. This facilitates a sense of belonging and commitment, which also maximizes how much they buy into your organization’s mission and goals.
Team synergy
A correct hire resonates not only with your company’s purpose, principles. and practices, but also their potential teammates.
Besides complementing and enhancing existing dynamics because of their values, they deliver skills and qualities that fill team gaps as well, improving collaboration and the unit’s overall performance.
Productivity and efficiency
The right hire comes with the necessary skills and experience for a role, meaning their time to productivity will be much less. This lets them make meaningful contributions early.
Such individuals can drive employee efficiency as well. For example, their fresh outlooks can identify flaws in existing processes and workflows and help optimize them.
Skilled new hires can even impact your organization’s performance in the future, as the top 20% of employees will typically account for 80% of its output.
Employer branding
Consistently hiring competent individuals that improve workplace dynamics positively impacts your organization’s culture as well. Besides being good performers, they ensure a harmonious environment that bolsters employee morale.
With your workforce nurturing such a positive environment, your organization can enjoy a boost in employer branding, which helps attract more qualified talent.
Customer satisfaction
Employees who buy into your organization’s mission are more likely to go above and beyond, as their work will align with their values. Since they’re willing to bring something extra to the table, their positive attitude and dedication will reflect in their interactions with customers.
With the right hires delivering great customer service, you secure more repeat business, as clients will leave with an enhanced sense of satisfaction and loyalty.
They’ll do wonders for word-of-mouth as well, seeing how 96% of customers satisfied by their interactions with your business are more likely to return and tell people about it.
Innovation and long-term success
Talented new hires bring fresh perspectives that drive innovation, helping your organization come up with creative solutions. Such contributions may challenge the status quo, but they drive the company forward because they find new ways to solve existing problems.
The right hiring decisions can also help you build a successful team, since you collect highly-qualified individuals who fit well into your company and support its purpose. Having such units, meanwhile, lets your business maintain its competitive edge and continuously evolve.
Job satisfaction and retention
When new hires are capable and compatible with their teams, they help cultivate more supportive dynamics. Such an element can significantly improve job satisfaction and retention, with a couple of studies backing this up:
- Gusto, for instance, found that working with an excellent team was the primary reason 37% of small business employees stayed with their employers.
- Statista, on the other hand, saw a staggering 89% of workers say that teamwork between departments and other business units is either important or very important to their job satisfaction.
Cost savings
Finding the right people can significantly reduce the financial burdens associated with recruitment, training, low productivity, and turnover. This holds true, especially when their skills and behaviors match the role’s expectations and your culture.
They’ll require less training and resources to finish, which is especially helpful, considering how learning and development initiatives can cost organizations up to $1,252 per employee.
What are the consequences of a bad hire?
While hiring the right person may yield substantial benefits, the drawbacks of employing the wrong one can be equally significant. To give you a better idea, here are the repercussions of making the wrong hiring decision:
Workplace conflict
An ill-suited employee can disrupt established team dynamics and give rise to workplace conflict, bringing forth a toxic environment.
For instance, their inability to fit into the company’s culture and collaborate effectively can result in misunderstandings and tension among team members.
Such a difficult workplace scenario can even spill over into the broader organization, damaging the morale and engagement of other employees.
Lower performance
A bad hire normally lacks the necessary skills, competencies, and motivation to do their job well. Such an underperforming employee negatively impacts productivity, as they disrupt workflows and slow down project timelines.
Not to mention, they may require more training and supervision to bring them up to speed, which eats up resources and diverts attention from more critical tasks. As a whole, it can prevent teams from properly contributing to the organization’s goals.
Wasted resources
A wrong hire has considerable financial implications, as the costs associated with recruitment, hiring, onboarding, training, and potential severance packages can add up quickly.
If they decide to leave your company, you even have to deal with voluntary turnover—something that costs businesses in the United States (U.S.) approximately $1 trillion per year!
Increased turnover
As mentioned, terrible hires can lead to higher turnover, as they can quickly become dissatisfied and part ways with your organization.
This problem can snowball, however, as having such instances regularly occur can destabilize teams and negatively impact their morale and productivity—meaning you’ll have to contend with more people leaving.
Damaged reputation
The productivity decrease brought about by an ill-fitting employee can exacerbate the burdens we’ve tackled so far.
For example, when a terrible employee faces your clientele, it can result in poor customer service, lost business opportunities, and damage to your company’s bottom line.
Frequent turnover and employee dissatisfaction can tarnish your organization’s reputation among potential hires as well.
Legal and compliance issues
A bad hire can come with questionable ethics and legal risks. For instance, they may fail to adhere to industry regulations or your company policies, exposing your organization to compliance issues.
This can include breaches of confidentiality, violations of labor laws, or failure to observe safety standards. These problems, meanwhile, can lead to costly legal battles, fines, and a tarnished company image, all of which further stress the importance of a rigorous hiring process.
How to hire the right person: 10 Staffing tips
However, there are multiple strategies that let you avoid the issues above. To make better hiring decisions, consider these tips:
1. Know your audience
Finding the right person starts as early as the first step of the employee life cycle: attraction. Regularly receiving applications from bad fits indicates you aren’t getting job descriptions in front of the appropriate audiences.
So, when promoting a job listing, think of it like marketing. Learn your audience’s interests and behaviors.
Find out where they seek employment and what language resonates with them. If that doesn’t work, change the keywords you use or post the opening somewhere else, whether it be on social media, your website, or other jobs boards.
2. Analyze the job opening
To properly communicate a role’s responsibilities, requirements, and challenges, you must deeply dive into it first.
So, ask for your employees’ insights, particularly those who currently fill a similar position. Gather input from their team members and managers as well. Try to get a full picture before progressing onto other strategies.
3. Craft detailed job descriptions
Your job description delivers your company’s first impression, so clearly define the open role’s duties and qualifications. Leave no room for misunderstanding or confusion.
Afterwards, showcase your organization and its people, as employer branding can make the job even more enticing.
4. Show that you compensate well
Obviously, competitive salaries and benefits are critical to attracting and retaining the right talent.
Although not obligatory, we advise you to be transparent about compensation, as it sets realistic expectations and lets you draw in suitable applicants. Statistics back up their importance as well:
- 62% of workers choose their employer depending on how attractive compensation is.
- 66% of employees say they’d leave their current organization for another if it offered better benefits.
5. Use the right platforms
When promoting on social media, keep in mind that each platform caters to a specific user base. Using the appropriate one, meanwhile, is critical to the success of your search for the right hire.
Browsing Reddit, for example, is ideal when filling a technical post since its technology sub-group attracts more than 27 million monthly visitors.
LinkedIn, on the other hand, is excellent for reaching millennials, as they make up most of its user base. 91% of executives even say it’s their first choice for professionally relevant content.
Younger workers like Gen Z, meanwhile, use these social platforms the most:
- Instagram: 76%
- TikTok: 68%
- Snapchat: 67%
6. Create comprehensive interviews
A meaningful, face-to-face conversation is one of the best ways to gauge a potential hire’s attitudes and skills. To prepare ones that deeply assess an individual’s fit, use various questions that tackle:
Behaviors
Behavioral interviews give you an idea of how individuals respond to certain situations. Questions that mirror difficult workplace scenarios are perfect for such purposes. For example, ask them about how they would manage team conflicts.
Competencies
Competency-based questions delve into a candidate’s experience and skills. By letting them talk about past instances that have resulted in successful projects, for example, you get a better idea of how equipped they are for their future responsibilities.
To gather thorough answers, we recommend using the STAR method (Situation, Task, Action, Result).
Cultural fit
We mentioned how the right hire will fit your company’s purpose and values. To gauge whether they align with the candidate, ask them about their principles, motivations, and preferred work environments. For example, “In what type of work setting do you flourish?”
Once your questions are prepared, standardize your interview process. Ensure fairness and consistency by asking candidates the same questions. Involving multiple interviewers helps elicit diverse responses as well.
7. Leverage employee referrals
Your own people’s networks can be superb sources of quality candidates. Employees are, in fact, more likely to recommend individuals equipped to meet an open role’s expectations and align with the company’s culture.
Even 88% of employers say that referrals are the best source of applicants, all of whom are better than average. So, to maximize your chances of making the right hiring decisions, create your own employee referral program.
8. Check references thoroughly
Reference checks are a standard part of every recruitment and hiring process. To build a more complete picture of your candidate and verify their resumes, qualifications, and the like, seek feedback from their previous employers and colleagues.
Since they’ve directly worked with your potential hire, they’ll be able to provide information regarding the individual’s past conduct and performance.
9. Build a positive candidate experience
To ensure the right people successfully make it through your recruitment and hiring process, establish seamless and respectful proceedings that leave a lasting impression. Achieving this can entail a few strategies, such as:
Streamlining the application process
60% of candidates quit an online application halfway due to the process’s length or complexity. Having over a dozen fields that need filling out increases the risk of applicant drop off as well.
Give job-seekers prompt updates
Being transparent about an application’s status can help you secure the right talent. In fact, despite failing their first attempt, those who receive notifications are 3.5x more likely to reapply with the same company.
Making online applications mobile-friendly
Appcast found that 67% of job applications were completed on mobile devices. Since candidates look for convenience and accessibility, make your recruitment process mobile-friendly:
- Use readable fonts
- Ensure user interfaces (UIs) adjust to applicants’ devices
- Maximize load speeds for your website and landing pages’
- Let potential hires submit requirements online
- Establish a browser-based online application process
- Use video conferencing platforms to conduct initial interviews
10. Conduct job fit assessments
A job fit assessment is an excellent tool for measuring how well a potential hire matches an open role and your company’s culture. It’s a systematic approach that goes beyond interviews, reference checks, and gathering work samples.
It also involves having applicants undergo skills tests and personality assessments to gauge their job-specific proficiencies and behaviors.
Profiles Asia Pacific, meanwhile, offers such job-matching tools. Our ProfileXT®, for example, assesses the total person, encompassing dimensions such as:
- Cognitive abilities: These include pace of learning, verbal skill, numerical ability, and the like
- Behavioral traits: These cover attributes such as decisiveness, energy, assertiveness, sociability, independence, and more
- Interests: These can range from technical, mechanical, enterprising, financial or administrative, people service, all the way to creative
If you want to maximize our ProfileXT® and make the correct hiring decisions, simply reach out!
Wrapping up—Hiring the right person is critical to success
To find the right here, you need to make a pivotal decision that can significantly impact your organization’s performance and growth.
By understanding the importance, benefits, and consequences of your staffing decisions, then following best practices, you can build a team that actually drives growth, innovation, and long-term stability.
By investing time and resources into a thorough and thoughtful hiring process, you can enjoy the benefits of a productive, cohesive, and motivated workforce.
Published: January 30, 2014
Updated: July 23, 2024
About the Author: Joseph
