It’s Spooky Season at the Omnia Group, and we’re here to inform you that hiring does not have to be scary! Over the last few weeks, we’ve collected some hiring horror stories and tips to avoid their mistakes. We’ve kept all of these stories anonymous to protect the innocent, but make sure you learn from their mistakes!
1. Find the Right Cultural Fit
This is probably the most important tip. Finding the right cultural fit is absolutely essential in both your hiring and retention practice. It’s estimated that 63% of people who quit their jobs in 2021 left because of a bad coworker or boss. Companies can’t afford to lose anyone due to poor fit anymore.
The Story:
“I made the worst hiring decision in over 30 years of my human resources career. I hired someone that I had a gut feeling would not get along with the team, but their resume was extremely impressive, and they seemed on paper to be a great catch. The fact that they were accepting our offer, lower than their previous employer, should have been a sign. This person was tasked with managing a team of 28, and by the sixth month, their turnover had gone up to 60% within their department. Not only their direct managed team, but other department heads were leaving because they could not put up with the unsupportive, unfriendly, and downright rude behavior. We will never make this mistake again.”
Assessing cultural fit is tricky, and we’ll address some ways to handle that later in this article, but one key takeaway we can point out now is that the Omnia Assessment is a key tool in assessing cultural fit. Using the tool to determine communication styles, behavioral traits, and other culture indicators can help you find the right people for your team.
2. Evaluate Skills BEFORE Making the Offer
The resume only really gives you half the story, and really, who knows what on a resume might be a flat out lie. While we like to think people wouldn’t lie to get a position, it’s becoming a common trend for job-hoppers to say they’re skilled in certain areas, collect a few paychecks during the onboarding process, and bounce as soon as they’re actually required to do their job.
The Story:
“My worst hiring experience was finding out someone had lied about their graphic design experience and falsified their portfolio. We hired someone, we’ll call him Ted, who said he had over 10 years of experience with graphic design and video editing. We have a thorough onboarding process that includes asking people to really learn and study our products, company culture, and in doing so, we give plenty of time to ramp up to actually producing work. We value a thorough onboarding. Ted took advantage of this, even requesting we extend his onboarding by a couple of weeks.
When it came time for him to start producing, we would get excuse after excuse on why there were so many delays. We found out he was using a popular $5 graphic design site to produce work and was having to do multiple rounds of revisions. Simple projects would take weeks. When confronted about this, he admitted he didn’t have a design degree, had no experience, and was outsourcing all of his work!”
How can you combat this? Make sample projects a must in your hiring practice, and ensure you check with previous employers or references if you feel you aren’t getting the whole story. You can even offer to pay for completing sample projects, but keep a firm deadline (in most cases, 24 hours is fine to complete a basic project).
3. Confirm References
Some people say that references are outdated and everything you need to know about someone can be found on their social media profiles. That’s not true, especially with everyone putting their best foot forward 95% of the time. That glorious Fiji vacation came with 28 hours of air travel, a cramped airplane middle seat, lost luggage, four buses, and two boats to get to that island resort, but you only see the champagne and crystal-clear waters. Much like asking a travel agent for advice on getting to your destination, you should probably ask references for advice on hiring.
The Story:
“We always said during our hiring process that we would be checking references, but we figured just asking would weed out people that didn’t have quality references. We let one slip through the cracks with someone that wanted to join our customer success team. After we made the offer and started down the onboarding path, and before their actual start date, they started making demands and asking to change the terms of their contract. We decided, out of precaution, we would go ahead and check references for the first time in our hiring…
We found out A LOT about this person, just given that all of the phone numbers were incorrect, and all of the emails were answered very quickly, and all mostly said the same thing. We pressed on these emails and asked for a voice to voice conversation and found out these references were forged! Thankfully, we were within our rights to withdraw the offer, but we lost several weeks going down this path with the wrong person.”
This one is easy: always require references, and always check them. People will tell you a lot if you give them the chance to talk. Listen more than you speak on these reference calls. And, keep your questions open ended.
4. Group Interviews Are Very Important
As we noted above, we’d cover some strategies to ensure a good cultural fit, and group interviews are probably the most important aspect of this, other than behavioral assessments, which can give you a much deeper level of understanding. Still, a group interview can uncover some very interesting tidbits of information.
The Story:
“I was part of a group interview recently where the candidate had gone through several rounds with several members of our leadership team and was finally advancing to the final round. All of the references checked out, the background check was clear, and employment history was verified. We thought we had found the best candidate for the job.
When he got on the call, he was horribly inappropriate. He made jokes about how people looked, about wanting to take the group out to bars, and even asked one of the team members if she was single. When the leader on the call (who had not been a part of any of the other interviews) informed him he was being inappropriate, he said this was his opportunity to really bond with everyone. The whole team confirmed that was NOT the way to bond.”
Needless to say, the offer was not extended.
Obviously, that’s the worst-case scenario. Still, a group interview can give you great insights into how someone will fit into the team and their true behaviors. Allow everyone in the group to ask their questions!
5. Promote Advancement and Competition in a Healthy Way (and be honest about it in the hiring process)
For this one, we’re going to flip the switch a bit. Let’s talk about a horror story on the other end of the hiring process. When promoting your company, you have to be clear with talent on advancement opportunities, career growth potential, and any other relevant culture information your potential talent should know. This next story comes from a hiring professional who experienced their own horror story as the one being hired!
The Story:
My last company was an “up or out” culture meaning everyone was expected to continue to advance their position in the company. If you weren’t being viewed as one to promote you were viewed as one on the way out. This meant you had to be constantly thriving to do more, give more, and produce more. You weren’t evaluated by how well you were doing your current job but by what you were doing to advance to the next one. At performance review time if you only exceeded the core requirements of your job but didn’t find new things to do and create new value, your performance was rated “marginal.” I had no desire to make partner – I just wanted to do well in the job I was in and to continue to learn and thrive in that role. As you can imagine, this culture also created a cutthroat mentality and behavior among peers. Everyone was in competition with others to get put on projects, or even to do basic volunteer activities. Nobody really looked out for each other – they were all in it to win it for themselves. I still have some PTSD from that experience. It was not a culture fit for me at all.”
If you’re looking to avoid these hiring horror stories, consider using the Omnia Behavioral Assessment to take some of the guesswork out of hiring. Find the right cultural fit, learn more about your potential hires than their resume can tell you, and make offers with confidence. If you’d like to learn more about the Omnia Assessment, get in touch with us, or try it here free!
Also, don’t miss our upcoming webinar, Hiring Doesn’t Have to be Scary, featuring ways to use the Omnia Assessment to your advantage!
