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The average cost of one bad hire is $17,000 and 75% of employers say they have hired the wrong person before. If you’ve ever been involved in hiring employees, you have experienced the stress of looking at various candidates and determining whether they will be the right one.
However, there are ways of decreasing the risk of hiring the wrong candidate for a position. The following recommendations help employers make better-informed decisions as they navigate the interviewing process.
Initial Clues to look for
- Punctuality – Candidates should arrive on time or a few minutes early. If they are late, did they inform you promptly and professionally and give an expected arrival time?
- Dress and appearance – How a candidate presents themselves in an interview is a signal of how they view the position and their potential coworkers.
- Firmness of handshake and eye contact – Have you ever shaken hands with someone and it felt like you were picking up a sock? If your candidates have a limp-noodle and avoid direct eye contact may be a clue for you to watch for any potential confidence issues during the interview. For customer-facing positions, the absence of either of these should raise alarms. If they don’t show these courtesies to you, you can count on them not extending them to your difficult customer.
- Enthusiasm – Ever interview a sloth? I felt like I did once. As the candidate was wilting in their chair I learned that no matter how polished a resume is, if the individual doesn’t have a fire in their bones they are not a candidate I consider. Lacking enthusiasm about the position before they are even hired is not a great sign of how they’ll respond on the job when routine, fatigue, and complacency rise.
Interview Techniques
- Ask questions requiring specific answers that draw from their past experiences. These open-ended questions allow candidates to show their abilities through detailed stories rather than tell you the “right answer” in a hypothetical world. The more you get them talking, the better you will know if this person could be a good fit for your organization.
- Answers to questions alone won’t always be enough to make a more informed decision. Dig deeper to make an employee demonstrate skills you consider most important. If the ability to learn quickly is a trait you want in a candidate, make them prove their skill through a test allowing them to use the internet for learning and the quick learners will emerge. For example, one hiring manager I worked with gave each candidate a Microsoft Excel test. Candidates had to use formulas and charts on data sets and were allowed to use the internet for assistance. Both their answers and completion time helped us determine who were the better candidates and gave us more to work with than a simple answer to a question.
- Interview the most qualified candidates twice – once in a one-on-one interview to filter out the best potentials and a second interview with those potentials with a panel of your trusted colleagues. You may want to try conducting the second interview in a slightly different location than the first interview, like a different room in the office or building. This gives a fresh scene for you and the interviewee and may provide you a better area to conduct any test you created for the interview.
Green Flag, Yellow Flag, Red Flag
“The perfect is the enemy of the good” meaning, don’t let the hunt for your imagined “perfect candidate” eat up your time and prevent you from hiring qualified individuals. To prevent wasting time, identify specific qualities that are the most important to you, or that a realistically ideal candidate possesses. Use a post-interview round-table discussion with your colleagues to evaluate whether an interviewee meets those qualifications.
I saw a company put this approach into practice using “green, yellow, and red flags”. Before the interview, the most important qualifications were determined. During the post-interview roundtable, the panel members pointed out the different flags they saw in each candidate.
Green Flags:
These are the attributes and characteristics of each interviewee making them a good potential employee. Depending on the position, some of the green flags may or may not include already having some of the specific skills needed for the job which can be taught later on the job. Some of the green flags to watch for are:
- They have solid “generic” skills that show they learn quickly and effectively regardless of their position. E.g. Skilled in writing, presentation, learning various types of software, interpersonal communications, etc.
- They have the personality and character that fits well in the company culture. We’d all rather work with someone who is likable and competent than skilled but abrasive.
- They are able to handle stressful situations with their head on their shoulders demonstrated through the specific experiences they tell and their behavior through the stress of the interview and/or tests. There’s too much at stake to believe an answer like “I’m good at handling stressful situations” with nothing tied to it.
- They came prepared and are actively engaged in conversations
Yellow Flags:
These are things that don’t necessarily disqualify a candidate right away but are things they did or didn’t do that might make you hesitate to hire them. Some examples are
- They showed up five or more minutes late without letting you know beforehand or immediately apologizing
- They didn’t come dressed as would be expected
- They have all of your preferred skills but are missing some “would-be-nice” additional skills
- Some of their answers lacked specific examples
Red Flags:
These are usually inexcusable items that were noticed throughout the interview process by one or all of the interviewers on the panel that may disqualify this employee from any further consideration.
- They were extremely late (20-30+minutes) without informing you beforehand
- They were obviously unprepared (e.g. have no specific examples or stories ready, didn’t research the company and ask wasteful questions, etc.)
- They didn’t manifest any personality or character traits that would fit in company culture
- They were disrespectful and/or didn’t directly answer any questions
- They didn’t come with any questions for you
Suggested Skill Demonstration Scenarios
Sales
Have the candidate sell you on the pen in your hand and watch for their technique and strategy. Depending on the level of sales professional you are hiring for, ask them to sell you your product to test their preparation and skill.
Marketing
Pull up your website and ask for two specific changes they would make and why they recommend those changes. Ask them to walk you through their thought process.
Developers
Provide a challenge or intermediate level problem and have them write an algorithm to solve it. This test can be distributed to potential candidates before the interview takes place so you can review the accuracy of their algorithm and cleanliness of code.
Customer Service or Help Desk
Role-play a phone call to see how they explain something semi-complicated over the phone or have them explain how to tie your shoe as though you have never tied one before.
Responding to Stress
Give the challenge to build a foot-high tower using a notecard in one minute. Notify them of every 15 seconds that pass to observe first-hand how they respond to stress in a new situation.
Teamwork
Put a candidate in a team either with some of your current employees or the other candidates and have them create the tallest free-standing tower they can out of 20 spaghetti noodles and 30 marshmallows within 5 minutes. The tower needs to stand for at least 60 seconds on its own. Now you can watch how they lead and take suggestions from other team members.
Sample Questions
Below are some questions you can ask in your next interview to test preparation, skill, and experience,
- Tell me about a time you had a conflict or challenge at work and how you resolved it.
- What are your greatest strengths?
- What are your weaknesses?
- Tell me about a time when you failed or messed up.
- Why do you want this job?
- What work environment do you prefer?
- Tell me about a time you had to tell a customer negative news and how you handled it.
- Tell me about a time when you had to exercise leadership.
- Do you have any questions for us?
- Why did you apply for this position? What attracted you to this company?
- In five minutes could you explain something to me that is complicated to others but you know well?
- How do you set goals? Tell me about a time when you set a goal and met it.