7 Ways to Cure a Hiring Headache

Headache WEB SMLLet’s face it, hiring can sometimes feel like a roll of the dice, an exasperating task, a time-consuming monster, and seemingly more trouble than it’s worth. Some team members want to examine every piece of data about a candidate, and others just want a warm body so other team members will stop complaining about all the extra work they have to perform due to a vacant position. Therefore, so many positions remain open, take forever to fill, or that warm body is brought on board. But let’s say you do everything right to hire the best candidate. You…

  1. Take the organization’s strategic plan into consideration
  2. Benchmark the job
  3. Write a definitive position description
  4. Write an attention-grabbing ad
  5. Use the best recruiting processes
  6. Conduct a strong screening process using
  • Resume review
  • Interviewing
  • Background investigations
  • Reference checks
  • Assessments
  • Drug tests

You no doubt, also include all the latest innovative technology and AI to help you make the best selection. But, oops! You wind up with a hiring headache from a bad hire. What went wrong?

The hiring plan above can help in eliminating hiring headaches, but there are no guarantees. Candidates can provide inaccurate information on resumes, be great actors in an interview, refences can fail to deliver accurate information, or there is bias on the part of the hiring manager. Or, hey, maybe the AI robot you hired had a headache in one of his or her computer chips.

Obviously, you want to try to understand what went wrong and learn from the mistake. However, now immediate action needs to be taken to either make a tweak, take a different direction, or make a drastic change. Here are some headache reducing ideas.

  1. Determine if there are any extenuating circumstances such as a health or family issue that may affecting performance. Then tweak the employee’s work load, hours, or whatever might be necessary.
  2. If you’ve administered assessments that have a section on how to manage the individual, this may be the opportune time to discuss this information, your expectations and your management style. Our assessments have a page of what the employee wants and what the employee needs. These are seldom, if ever, the same. This can provide great insight that can the both of you to get on the same page.
  3. If the issue is a lack of skills, then provide the proper training.
  4. If you should notice a lack of change after some efforts, engage the employee in coaching and begin documentation. You must begin a paper trail to protect the employee, yourself, and the organization.
  5. It may occur, that during coaching, it could become known that the employee is indeed in the wrong job. Now the employee can take a different direction that may help the employee to be more successful. Make the change carefully and swiftly. However, be careful about passing a bad apple around the organization.
  6. If you must make a drastic change and terminate the employee, help in their job search.
  7. Be accountable for the hiring mistake, learn from it, make whatever tweaks, directional moves, or changes to your hiring system, and move on.

Despite the best hiring system, errors can occur. Whenever you deal with people, outcomes can never be a guarantee. The important thing to remember is that when a hiring headache finds its way into your organization, address it immediately. That will be the best antidote.

Thank you for reading this blog. For more information about how to avoid hiring headaches Let's get started

Sources:

Frazer, C. (2018, April). 9 Ways to Stop a Bad Hire From Infecting Good Talent. Target Training International

Graphic Credit BigStock.com