Hiring the wrong person can cost small businesses more than most realise. In fact, the figure sits anywhere from one to four times the annual salary of the role. But there’s more than just the financial cost. It’s the loss of productivity, the retraining and the time spent restarting the search. A single bad hire can set a small team back for months. Yet many businesses still rely on gut instinct or a quick resume scan to make one of their most important decisions.
Smarter hiring doesn’t require a large HR department or an expensive recruiting platform. It requires a process that catches problems before they become expensive ones. And these need to be applied consistently to every candidate, rather than only when something feels off.
These four steps can be beneficial in helping build a process that reduces the risk of taking on a bad hire.
Vague job postings attract vague candidates. Listings that rely on generic phrases like “team player” or “self-starter” without describing actual day-to-day responsibilities will just result in drawing candidates that don’t have a clear idea of the job role, and then all you get is mismatched expectations.
A strong job description, however, names the specific tasks the role involves, the tools or software the person will use, and the outcomes they’ll be assessed against. This filters out applicants who aren’t a fit before an interview ever takes place, saving time for both the business and the candidate. Don’t forget to include a realistic salary range and the reporting structure for the role too, as this can help reduce the number of applicants dropping out midway through the process.
Asking each candidate different questions will make it difficult to make comparisons fairly, and it opens the door to bias creeping into the decision-making process.
A structured interview where every candidate for a role is asked the same core questions in the same order gives hiring managers a consistent basis for comparison. It also makes it easier to spot which candidates actually answer the questions asked versus which ones talk about it.
Skipping a background check to save time or money can end up costing more if a hire turns out to have a history that puts the business, employees, or customers at risk. Services like Direct Screening run criminal, employment, and identity verification checks so you can confirm a candidate’s history before an offer becomes final rather than finding out about a problem after someone is already on the payroll.
Candidates choose their references carefully, meaning they are going to pick the ones that will speak highly of them. Calling a former manager or colleague who wasn’t listed to when it’s possible to identify them can help surface what a candidate might want to keep covered up or under the radar until it’s too late. You’ll often get a much better idea of how they actually perform on a day-to-day basis or how they work with others in their job role.
Create a shortlist of specific questions focused on how the candidate handles a real situation rather than general impressions, as this gets you more useful answers than open-ended ones.
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