{"id":19928,"date":"2016-09-15T10:40:52","date_gmt":"2016-09-15T14:40:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.glensfalls.com\/glensfallsbusinessjournal\/2016\/09\/business-report-hiring-is-not-a-coin-toss.html"},"modified":"2017-11-08T11:00:55","modified_gmt":"2017-11-08T16:00:55","slug":"business-report-hiring-is-not-a-coin-toss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.glensfalls.com\/glensfallsbusinessjournal\/2016\/09\/business-report-hiring-is-not-a-coin-toss\/","title":{"rendered":"Business Report: Hiring Is Not A Coin Toss"},"content":{"rendered":"
\nby Michael Cruz\n<\/div>\n

Place an ad, screen resumes, develop a short list, interview applicants, screen out unqualified people, check references, make an offer to the survivor. Repeat.<\/p>\n

These are bad hiring practices. Bad, because any conscientious business owner who follows up on his or her hires would find that, despite all these efforts, about half of new hires turn out to be low performers.<\/p>\n

In fact, most studies show typical hiring practices have about the same accuracy as flipping a coin. And it costs. Not just the time and money it takes to find the person. Not just the pay you gave them while you were figuring out this was a mistake. And not just the cost of the time everyone else took to train him or her. It costs in customer perceptions, employee problems and lost productivity.<\/p>\n

“I don’t want to go through that again”, a business owner recently told me. What you need to do to ensure successful hires is easy to fix. You generally are looking for someone with specific technical skills in manufacturing, sales, accounting or some other aspect of your business. Be specific in what you are looking for–both behavior and skills. You need a job description.
\nWithout one, you will never know what to look for. Toss the coin instead. The most critical part is determining how to interview the applicants.<\/p>\n

The time to prepare is not when someone pokes their head through your door and says, “Bill Smith is here about the job.” Preparation needs to happen when you place the ad or put the word out that you are looking for someone.<\/p>\n

What questions will you ask? What do you want to know about their aptitude? Work history? Ask questions that force the applicant to give you specific examples of how they have behaved in the past. The biggest interviewing mistake people make is to ask questions that allow a candidate to give general answers. If you don’t have the time to figure this out beforehand, flip that coin.<\/p>\n

Remember to define the role, determine how to test for the skill and aptitude you desire, and have a solid plan for training. Then you can spend your coin, rather than flipping it to determine hiring success rates.<\/p>\n

Cruz is president of Lighthouse Advisors LLC in Queensbury.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Michael Cruz Place an ad, screen resumes, develop a short list, interview applicants, screen out unqualified people, check references, make an offer to the survivor. Repeat. These are bad hiring practices. 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