1. Indecisiveness.
Waiting too long to make a decision on candidates. ✕

The unemployment rate in IT is 1%. In Sales and Finance is close to that too.
If you want to hire the best candidates, you should take less time than your competition. The average recruiting process takes 1 month from introduction to offer.

We recommend you shorten this time to increase the chances you retain the talent you need to grow.

2. Talking instead of listening ✕

You’ve scheduled interviews with the best candidates. You’ve emailed them the job description in the hopes that they’ll read it. You have a marathon interview day planned. Now it’s time to be silent. That’s right, be silent. The majority of interviewers talk too much and ask the wrong questions.

Asking questions like: “Did you notice in the job description that we require someone who has done xyz?” will simply produce a yes/no response, which isn’t really instructive.

Asking open-ended questions, such as “tell me about your experience with xyz…“, necessitates a thoughtful response that not only provides you with information about their background, but also allows them to talk about themselves.

Allow for awkward silence if necessary. Let them think about their response for a moment. They’ll attempt to fill it, and you’ll learn a lot more than you would otherwise. The role of an interviewer is to ask questions that elicit a long, thorough response. On average, talk 20% of the time and listen 80% of the time.

3. Be Careful of References ✕

Everyone usually give their best colleagues or bosses as references. Usually these colleagues and former bosses will only have positive things to say about the candidate.

Thus all references should be taken with a huge helping of salt.

If you do get a bad reference for a candidate, then that means that even their friends do not like them so be very wary.

Overall, references rarely signal red flags so we encourage our clients to look elsewhere for signals of trouble.

BONUS TIP

4. Having too many deal breaker requirements ✕