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Reduce your recruitment costs - common hiring mistakes to avoid

The wrong hiring decision can be one of the costliest mistakes you can make in business. On the other hand, recruiting the right person can transform your organisation for the better. With recruitment on average costing a company £5,443* per vacancy, it is important employers use a robust recruitment process and avoid making the obvious hiring mistakes.

We have consulted with our Shaw Gibbs recruitment experts to bring you their top tips for reducing your recruitment costs.

Common Recruitment Mistakes

There are a number of factors that can result in a bad hire, generally they fall into the following categories:

You recruit them because of their skills / experience, but ignore their attitude

It’s not just about finding someone equipped to do the job; it’s also about finding a fit. This is not just about bad attitude it’s also about finding employees who are a good cultural fit for your company. Don’t expect an introvert to fit into a business that thrives on team spirit, or someone with poor interpersonal skills to be able to liaise with your clients. Using psychometric profiling as part of your recruitment process is a quick and easy way of gaining valuable additional information on your candidate’s personality and motivation. Online psychometric profiling questionnaires can take as little as 8-10 minutes to complete and you could ask candidates to complete the questionnaire before final stage interviews meaning you can ask any follow up questions when you meet them.

Hiring people you know

Of course sometimes the perfect candidate is a friend, someone you play on a team with, perhaps an old university/school buddy or even a member of your family. Similarly, you may have got a referral from an existing employee, someone they know who is ideal for the job. Tread carefully. It’s worthwhile establishing some clear guidelines that demonstrate impartiality both when recruiting and when managing anyone who has close ties to someone within the company. Put all candidates through the same robust recruitment process – don’t just offer them the job after a quick 20 minute chat over coffee

Not trusting your gut feeling

Sometimes a little bit of intuition enhances the recruitment process. A candidate might look great on paper, may say all the right things in interview but something doesn’t ring true. Have a bit of faith in your own experience – if after the interview you still have some question marks, phone the candidate up and ask for more information.

Desperation

Desperate people don’t make good decisions! Recruiting someone because they’re the best of a poor bunch is not a good reason and rarely works out for the best. If you’re not attracting the right kind of candidates, reassess your recruitment process and your employee proposition. Maybe your job description is targeted at the wrong kind of people, or perhaps you need to take a more proactive approach to sourcing candidates.

Not asking for references

It’s surprising how many companies fail to check references or implement any kind of background searches. Potential problems can be avoided by doing these simple checks and verifying that your candidate is who they say they are, and can do the job.

Of course one great way to avoid making these costly mistakes is to bring in an HR & Recruitment specialist. We are not a recruitment agency. We will review your vacancy and advise you on the best way to fill it. Recently, we have helped fill a number of our clients’ vacancies by simply tapping into our network which has in many cases more than halved their recruitment bill. Working in partnership with Shaw Gibbs will save you time, freeing you up to do what you do best – running your business.

Further information:

For more information on how we could help you reduce your recruitment costs, please contact Kerry Whitfield on 01865 292260 or email hr@shawgibbs.com

*Oxford Economics Study

Contact Us

For more information on how we could help you reduce your recruitment costs, please contact Kerry Whitfield on 01865 292260 or email hr@shawgibbs.com

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