Five common recruitment missteps that could be holding your business back

Having the right people on your team is an important input into running a successful and resilient business. But a few common recruitment missteps could be holding your business back explains Shane O’Hagan, Talenttalks’ Expert on Expert on Talent Acquisition and Recruitment Process Design in this podcast.

Recruitment can be a costly exercise, but when your choices result in poor hiring decisions the cost extends beyond mere monetary terms and could lead to a loss of productivity, revenue, and even the ability to retain your best employees.

The five common recruitment missteps business owners and leaders make are:

1. Having a misalignment between stakeholders on what a company needs versus wants in hiring talent. This simple misalignment leads to the recruitment of talent that don’t meet the actual needs of the business, whether those be in the present or the future.

2. Falling into the hiring ‘people just like me’ trap. This is a common misstep in owner-founder run businesses where leaders are often tempted to look for a clone in new hires. For a business to be agile and receptive to changes, you need people who think differently about things. When people all operate and think in the same way, it can lead to complacency, stifle innovation and see good talent exiting your business.

3. Recruiting for a current need and not for the future. The world we operate in is changing all the time with customer and consumer needs continuously shifting. While it is tempting to recruit talent that can immediately plug into an organisation, businesses should look to hire talent with the ability to grow over time as needs and business requirements evolve. Making sure your HR strategy is rooted in your business strategy is important in ensuring your hiring decisions help to futureproof your business.

4. Running an inconsistent recruitment process. Most businesses rely on line managers to recruit new talent. But without a standardised process and common criteria against which individuals are assessed, hiring decisions could follow a siloed approach with the potential for culture misalignment and create fertile ground for discriminatory hiring practices. A consistent hiring process enables managers to agree on what good looks like for the overall business. 

5. Not paying attention to the candidate experience.  Failing to manage the candidate experience in the right way can see companies losing out on the opportunity to recruit top talent into their businesses – both now and in the future.