9 Benefits to Hiring the Right Candidate the First Time

Around

According to Forbes, the U.S. Department of Labor puts the cost of a bad hire at
30% of the annual salary for that position. And McKinsey & Co. states that hiring
a ‘top performer’ over an ‘average performer’ yields up to 67% more productivity
and profit. Obviously there is a lot at stake every time you fill a position at your
company. Here are nine other benefits you will enjoy if you hire the right candidate
the first time around.

o You will slash the costs of the hiring process:

It’s no secret that the hiring process is expensive. Not only do your
hiring managers have to take time out of their busy schedules, but you
also have to spend money on criminal background checks, skills tests,
job board postings, and more. When you hire the wrong person, you
have to conduct the same hiring process more than once, essentially
doubling the cost. A good hire avoids both the second hiring process
and the added cost.

o You will maximize productivity:

Your time is valuable, and your managers’ time is valuable. Running
a hiring process means pulling high-level members of your team out
of their day-to-day routines and having them review applications and
conduct interviews. When you have four or five interviews every day
for a few weeks, it’s tough to get much of your other work done. A
quick and thorough hiring process allows you to get back to work
sooner and with greater efficiency.
o You’ll save time you would have spent reviewing applications or
sitting in interviews:
Productivity loss isn’t the only problem with stranding yourself or your
business leaders in interview rooms. The other issue is even simpler:
boredom. After a while, every resume can start looking the same, and
interviews feel interchangeable. When you spend too much time
conducting a hiring process, your own boredom might leave you
poorly equipped to recognize top candidates. The fewer and further-
between your hiring processes are, the easier it will be to get down to
business with a clear head and find the diamond in the rough.

o You won’t have to deal with the damage that a bad hire can do to
your company:
Bad hires can have a negative impact for a lot of different reasons.
Some of them can pose a safety risk to customers or colleagues
(hence the need to run criminal background checks). Others might
steal from your company, hurt your client relations through
incompetence, or create a negative atmosphere in the workplace. Bad
hires will almost always damage your business in one way or another.
Avoiding bad hires will keep your enterprise untarnished.

o You will preserve the morale of your internal teams:

No employee exists in a vacuum. Every person you hire fits into your
organization like a puzzle piece in a much larger canvas. A good hire
can not only add vital new skills and experience to your team, but can
also bring warmth, inspiration, and camaraderie to your company
culture. At the other end of the spectrum, a bad hire can hurt the
morale of your entire staff, whether by spoiling the work culture with a
 bad attitude or by forcing other team members to pick up the slack
behind his or her lackluster work.

o You will protect your image as an employer

When your company culture goes downhill, word will always get out.
If your employees aren’t saying good things about your business (or
if they are leaving because they are no longer happy with their jobs),
those things reflect poorly on you as an employer. If you post the same
job twice in a six-month period, that also reflects poorly on you as an
employer. Hiring the right people will protect your reputation on both
fronts.

o You won’t let good candidates go out the door:

Every time you hire someone, you have to turn down dozens of other
applicants—a fair number of whom are probably qualified for the
position. If you find the right person, this tradeoff doesn’t sting so
badly. When you make a bad hire, it can be frustrating to know that
you let better candidates slip through your fingers. Sure, you might
still have contact information for some of the people who were in your
applicant pool the first time, but the most qualified people have
probably already found other jobs and won’t be too eager to come
running back to a company that already rejected them.

o You don’t have to train an employee who won’t stick around:

Interviewing people and reviewing resumes is a hassle, but often, the
single biggest irritation of the hiring process is employee onboarding.
Training employees, acquainting them with your company processes
and policies, and helping them integrate into your team takes a lot of
time. Even with very talented and adaptable people, the onboarding
process will never happen overnight. Depending on the complexity of
 the position at hand, it can take your new hire months—if not a solid
year—to reach full productivity. Putting all that time and effort into
training someone who isn’t going to be a part of your organization is
one of the most crushing blows when you’ve made a bad hire. To
make matters worse, when you do eventually hire someone else, you
have to start the onboarding process—and the ramp up to full
productivity—over again.

o You avoid giving passwords and confidential company

information to people you can’t trust:
These days, every employee needs access to company websites,
accounts, software, and confidential information. Usually, giving out
this info is no big deal, because you are giving it to people who are
going to be a part of your team for years to come. When you bring a
person into your organization, give them the keys to the kingdom, and
then terminate their employment a few months later, you create a
major cyber-security headache. Sure, your IT team can just shut down
the user’s accounts, logins, or software licenses. What you can’t do is
take back any confidential information that the person gleaned while
working for your company. Hiring the right person the first time helps
make sure that as few people as possible ever get access to your
systems or data.

Conclusion
The hiring process is difficult—made tougher by the fact that some job searchers
are willing to lie to enhance their employment chances. Employers can fight bad
hires by implementing detailed employee screening processes, including criminal
background checks, reference checks, verification checks (for employment,
education, and professional certification), skills tests, personality assessments,
and targeted interview questions. These methods, combined with a clear picture
of what the job at hand entails and what the company culture should be, will help
you find the right hire the first time around.