Making a good hire is difficult. Ask any business owner and they will confirm this. Why is this so?

#1 reason is that you are dealing with people. And, people live in a world that constantly changes.

A few years ago, ADP revealed in a study that if you doing everything right in the hiring process you only have a 50% chance of making a good hire. Now they didn’t exactly define the term “good hire” but let’s say a good hire is one where the individual performs to expectations and stays on the job at least one year. And “doing everything right” in the hiring process includes a well-defined job profile, good sourcing strategies, multi-step interview process, and reference and background checks.

When the odds are only 50%, no wonder so many hiring managers, just say. “To heck with it. Why bother to go through all these hoops? I’ll just trust my gut.” Yet, the odds are not 50%. In reality, if you take short cuts, the odds go down substantially. In the ADP study, the odds went down as low as 15-20% if you just review resumes and conduct a few interviews. Each additional step in the evaluation process increase the chances that you would a better hire.

Since I work with business owners that are pressed for time, I certainly understand the desire to take short cuts in the hiring process. So, if you want to take short-cuts, here is my recommendation.

1) Define the position clearly. How can you find what you are looking for if you don’t know what it is?

2) Evaluate for “willingness” to do the job. Do they have a real passion for your industry and the position?

3) Compare candidates for job fit by using assessments. Take the guessing game out of the equation.

If you do these three steps, you can increase the odds that you will make a good hire!

Ann Clifford