Hiring the wrong person is more costly than you think.
The cost of hiring the wrong person
Hiring the wrong person is infinitely more costly than you think. Even just having to start over again looking for the right candidate is enough to make your stomach turn. But the costs go much deeper than that.
A long list of costs and opportunity costs
The total cost of hiring the wrong person could be the sum of any of these costs:
- Recruitment fees
- Time taken to hire and to search again
- HR/recruitment team effort and time
- Line manager’s division’s costs
- Cost of not filling the position
- Cost to train someone new
- Time for current employees to train someone new
- Line manager effort and time
- Productivity costs
- Staff morale costs
- Company reputation costs
How to mitigate the expenses
There are few ways in which you can reduce or avoid these costs. Emphasise cultural fit during interview questioning and hold test days for technical skills. Complete all references and qualification/criminal/financial checks as applicable. Social media and other public cues can also drive a decision and help you pick up things that will aid your decision to hire or not.
Lastly, make sure the new employee is supported from the start – often someone not working out is caused by not fitting in, not because they don’t, but because they don’t feel they belong.
Hiring the wrong person eventually happens
Many think the cost of hiring the wrong person is not going to apply to them, but it happens, even in the strictest of recruitment environments. Assuming the legal side is all handled or approached correctly, there need not be huge costs to undergo if you’ve planned well, as mentioned above. You should also call a discussion with line managers and recruitment around what went wrong when the employee didn’t work out to learn from your mistakes and apply these findings and knowledge right away to the new hiring process.
The cost of hiring the wrong person is enormous when the above list is taken into account. By preparing for the eventual situation where a new employee doesn’t work out for whatever reason, you can shorten the time and lessen the work burden on your company’s resources, filling the role again faster and with a better, suitable person.