Read this before you HIRE

Bradford Smith, a consultant who helps major corporations with their hiring decisions, has estimated from his study of fifty-four U.S. companies that the average managerial “mis-hire” costs a company twenty-four times the individual’s base compensation.

While the cost of termination, rehiring, and mistakes are significant, it is important to realize that the biggest expense of mis-hiring a manager is the opportunity cost. Opportunity cost is an economic concept that looks to quantify the forgone profit of one (or more!) missed opportunities. Opportunity costs are challenging to quantify, but I am sure you can point to profit-generating decisions you've made as a leader and recognize what would've happened if you didn't make those decisions. Missed revenue, stressed-out employees and the loss of great staff are all significant consequences of poor hiring practices.

So, how do you make the best hiring decisions to reduce the risk of mis-hiring? Consider these six quick tips when you enter the hiring process.

1. C-Level managers usually hire C-Level players. Choose your best and most confident employees to help make hiring decisions.

2. Identify and engage the best possible people, then invest in them. You may not find someone with a great attitude and all the required skills. Consider hiring for attitude and training the skills, when possible. As a bonus, training and development contribute to employee retention and engagement.

3. Familiarize yourself with your own bias. Be especially aware of how these biases affect the interview process, and recognize when you misjudge someone based on unreasonable assumptions rather than fact.

4. Don't just glaze over a resume. Analyze a candidate's past experience and try to understand their career progression fully. If a candidate spent years working in a major corporation with limited career progression into leadership positions, consider why. Alternatively, if a candidate has seemingly jumped around a lot, recognize ways your organization could challenge and keep them engaged.

5. Remember the implications of groupthink and consider ways a candidate with unique experience could bring new ideas to your organization.

6. Consider hiring a consulting firm to temporarily fill mandatory positions to remove the time pressure of hiring someone for the role.

At Integrity Business Consulting, we can help you maintain your operations during periods of employee turnover. We specialize in filling gaps in your org chart to ensure smooth operations despite critical absences. We then go a step further by providing training for your future hires to ensure nothing falls through the cracks. We make the process simple by taking care of all the details. Email us when notice is given, and we'll cover everything else.

Finally, remember these wise words by David Ogilvy: “If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. But if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants.”

About the photo: Honestly. I'm running out of pictures to share. So enjoy this one of a random vine along some highway in the middle of nowhere, Australia. Remember, life is short. Don't forget to have a little fun along the way, even if you're terrified of snakes and forgot your hiking boots. It'll be fine.