Holding back ‘bad hires’
The growing menace
The worst mistake any organisation can make in terms of
recruiting is to get ‘bad hires’ on board. A ‘bad hire’ is a new recruit who
either does not have the required skill set or someone who does not have the
right attitude and aptitude, required for the job. Navjit Singh, business head,
Exon Solutions explains, “A bad hire is a person whose skill set as a
professional doesn’t match up to the demands/requirements of his/her job.”
“A person can be hired on the basis of his/her performance during the
interview, also if their resume is very impressive. This is no indication of the
performance of the person. Therefore, the challenge lies in taking corrective
steps in the recruitment stage itself. A bad hire is usually a person who’s
undisciplined, unproductive, and severely lacks the “can do” attitude. Hence, to
avoid such hires, the interviewer, needs to be alert and a keen listener in
order to gauge the candidate’s abilities,” expresses Sunil Ghorawat, managing
partner, Earth Water Group.
The hiring challenge
Hiring a wrong person can be very detrimental to the growth
and reputation of the organisation. Also, the financial repercussions are far
too many. Recent studies have shown that the cost of a bad hire can range from
one to five times of their annual salary. “Apart from the enormous loss in terms
of financial cost, one bad hire can affect the morale and confidence of the
colleagues, team and clients and in certain areas, the entire organisation,”
informs Singh.
Neeraj Mediratta, director, Ace Data Devices says,
“Monetary loss can be calculated to a certain extent but the biggest loss is the
loss of customer loyalty and the brand equity that the organisation has built
over the years. Additionally, the rest of the team has to work even harder to
balance the performance, thus resulting in burnouts, low employee morale, and
even frustration in employees.”
The right choice
In order to avoid such mishaps, it becomes imperative for
organisations to have corrective measures in place to deal with such undesirable
situations. So how can an organisation prevent recruiting such bad hires?
“Attracting the right candidates by proper recruitment branding and choosing the
right recruitment channels helps prevent bad hires from coming on board. A
thorough reference check of the candidate does play an important part in the
hiring process,” advises Chetan Shah, MD, Synygy India.
Singh states
that the ideal scenario to eliminate bad hires is to have a robust, scalable and
seamless recruitment system in place. “The system has to be a mix of processes
of skill evaluation, psychometric evaluation and background/reference checks,”
he adds. Rajaram Agrawal, MD, TalentAhead India adds, “Generally, the HR or
consultants carry out the reference check with the two referees whose names are
provided by the candidates themselves. I feel that this is not the right
approach, simply because the candidate, more often than not, has already taken
these two people in confidence before providing their names. Hence, it is
important to do independent checks.”
“Each role in the organisation
should have a competency matrix associated with it. Competency mapping can be
done with the help of behavioural event-based interviews and competency
questionnaires. More and more open ended questions should be put forth to
candidates so that it becomes a lot easier for recruiters to gauge his/her
strengths and weaknesses,” explicates Ghorawat.
How many companies
are as rigorous about evaluating job candidates as they are about deciding on an
investment proposal? Reality is that hiring processes are poorly designed and
executed. Hence, HR needs to realise that a steadfast recruitment process is in
the organisation’s interest.
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