The Cost of Hiring Mistakes

It is becoming more expensive when managers make mistakes and hire the wrong people. A company can be set back by as much as six months as they redo the advertising and screening process. Most managers have had the experience of hiring persons who had excellent resumes, presented themselves very well in the interview, had neat appearances and seemed to have the qualifications to meet the necessary job requirements – only to find out later that these seemingly qualified candidates turned out to be the wrong person for the job. Today, the chances of making a bad hiring decision are greater than ever, as applicants have become more skilled at presenting themselves in resumes which really are self reports. On the other hand, interviews are performances at which some people are very good. Identifying potentially counterproductive employees before you hire them is one of the greatest challenges to a manager who makes hiring decisions. The problem of hiring counterproductive employees has reached epidemic proportions.

Resume Falsification

We have reviewed thousands of resumes at The JobBank over the past 10 years and we estimate that more than 20 percent contain information that is falsified or exaggerated to some extent. These include qualifications, work experiences and achievements. We are also well aware that some applicants have omitted critical job-related issues. Sometimes, professionals are offended when we ask them to bring the originals of their qualifications to the interview. They tell us that no one has ever asked them to do that before. Our response is very simple, “That’s why we are asking”.

Employee Theft

Many people do not understand that the check at the exit of places like Price Mart and Mega Mart is mainly to catch staff-customer collusion. In the USA, losses due to employees are greater than $40 billion a year and increasing 15 percent per year. In retail establishments, employee theft is estimated at 43 percent of shrinkage losses, compared to only 30 percent attributed to shoplifting. Overall, employee theft can increase the cost of retail merchandise as much as 15 percent. In financial institutions, losses have more than doubled in recent years. Losses due to internal fraud have been about four times that of burglary and robbery. Many Jamaican companies are quietly suffering significant losses out of fear of bad publicity. The FBI estimates that internal theft in the USA accounts for 86 percent of all losses every year.

Pre-employment Screening Methods

Most companies use several selection methods when assessing job applicants because no single applicant screening procedure alone can determine employability. Choices must be made based on whether or not these particular selection procedures are cost-effective in terms of time, money and other resources needed to perform them and the quality of the employees hired using them.

Interviews

Interviewing is probably the most common pre-employment screening technique. A structured interview can verify information on applications and resumes. It also can provide valuable insight into an applicant’s personality, skills and abilities. But interviewing may not be as effective as employers would like because it is often a subjective, non-directed process. Also, it can be difficult to determine truthfulness when discussing work history and the level of skills and abilities. Unfortunately, most interviewers are not trained in interviewing techniques and may not have the ability to elicit the types of information the employer needs.

Reference Checks

Reference checks are useful for verifying information on an application form or a resume and for providing background information on an applicant’s work history. Unfortunately, reference checks do not always yield reliable information because many employers are reluctant to say anything negative about a past employee, and because misconduct, even if it did occur, may have gone undetected. An additional difficulty is that a prospective employer has no real way of knowing if the designated references are themselves reliable or if they are the most important ones to check.

Next we will look at Criminal History Check, Polygraph Exams, Handwriting Analysis and Psychological Inventories and provide a comparative assessment as to their effectiveness in hiring the right person.

Leahcim T. Semaj & Company Limited

The JobBank

Tel: (876) 948-5627

Fax: (876) 756-2337 

Web: www.ltsemaj.com

Email: info@ltsemaj.com

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