Recruiting an employee is not an easy task because it involves numerous factors such as screening, interviewing, hiring and finally training suitable candidates. This entire process is time consuming, expensive and full of hurdles. The following are bad practices which many firms are guilty of falling into.

Unaware of what skills you’re after

A large number of companies have virtually no idea about the kind of skill they’re actually in need of. At times they fail at developing basic elements such as a job description and expect their employees to be able to perform them out of the blue.

Basing the recruitment process on the interview

Although a one-on-one meeting with the candidate is a good opportunity to find out their strengths and weaknesses, an interview is not the end all be all. It is a well known fact that not all candidates who pass their interviews with flying colors are able to actually perform at work. Some people just do not have a good day at their interview and come across as lackluster when they’re clearly not.

For this reason you should make use of filters to separate the chaff from the wheat. Take advantage of social media channels and learn about the background of your candidate and then proceed to conduct interviews with them. Learn as much as is possible before actually scheduling them in for a meeting.

The interview should be well planned

Botched interviews remain a common plight marring most job recruitment processes. This is primarily because the interview process goes through the HR department who are sometimes disconnected with the company’s product. They end up extracting all the wrong kinds of information and base their judgments purely on their instincts, also called their ‘hunch’.

They should ask them useful question pertaining to the business and how they can actually benefit the business instead of making small talk with them.

Advertise in the right places

You need to realize that the right candidates will only apply to your firm if they’re aware of job vacancies. Unfortunately there really isn’t an automatic process invented which magically notifies talented individuals of an opening in your company. You will have to advertise in the right places depending on the type of job. For instance, if you’re an online firm, it makes sense to place ads on online job aggregating sites rather than print media such as newspapers.

Once again identifying the right channels of advertisement is up to the management and HR personnel.

Settling with the better of the bunch

Sometimes the response you got from your job interview is somewhat lackluster and no promising candidate ever showed up. But because you just have to fill a vacancy, you end up hiring the best of the bunch despite knowing that this will only backfire. A few months down the line you end up realizing that this candidate never stood a chance and you eventually have to ‘let them go’. The process begins anew and tons of time and money gets wasted.

Job recruitment is about finding individuals with the right set of talent, skill and focus and requires due process.