17 Common Hiring Mistakes: Part 4
4. Not Conducting enough interviews
A few years back I was looking to hire someone to create a new division for our company. The person needed a rather eclectic background that was hard to find. I interviewed a candidate and it became clear after two interviews that she was not the person for the job. I went back to the drawing board and found another candidate that looked great on paper. He had the skills experience I needed.
He came in to interview and I hired him on the spot.
Now my rule of thumb is to interview any key hire at least 3 times, with various people sitting in on the interview. It is also good to take the person to lunch before you hire them!
The next Monday he started working and to welcome him, I took him to lunch with another one of my staff members. The lunch proved to be awkward. He revealed a few things about himself that made me realize this was not his dream job and he was taking a big step down to come to work for us. It was also outside of his comfort zone as he was being asked to do sales and he was primarily a marketing guy – quite proficient in creating marketing plans. But talking to people he didn’t know sort of scared him.
I was worried I had acted too quickly and made a mistake. Sure enough, 6 months later he took a job for much more money in his field of marketing. In the entire 6 months he had not made any sales and actually had no real good contacts to turn over. He left mid a big project, which caused a great deal of stress for the rest of my staff.
What I learned here is that my second interview – the lunch – revealed the true character of the candidate. It was just too bad it happened after I had hired him. Now my rule of thumb is to interview any key hire at least 3 times, with various people sitting in on the interview. It is also good to take the person to lunch before you hire them!
