Wednesday, March 7, 2012

E-Tip # 381: Top 5 Mistakes Made When Hiring A Leader

Greetings!

What is the most common mistake employers make when hiring or promoting supervisors, managers and executives? It is simple: Employers commonly fail to define the roles most critical for successful performance.
So how can an organization create a better track record of success in talent management? By avoiding the most common mistakes and setting up processes that ensure a systematic approach to screening, hiring, and clarifying expectations for those in new positions, managers can implement more successful talent management recruitment.

Top 5 Mistakes Made When Hiring A Leader For An Organization

Below Are The 5 Most Critical Hiring Mistakes Employers Make:

Mistake #1: Inadequately Defining And Evaluating Roles - It is critical for a new employee to have a defined role with clear, measurable performance standards. In addition, your company needs to have a way to evaluate their performance in order to measure the success of the employee. It proves to be more valuable to meet with employees often - at least quarterly to offer feedback on their performance as oppose to the typical once a year evaluation.

Mistake #2: Insufficient Grooming Of High-Potential Employees - In order to create a succession of solid employees, it is important to offer coaching, mentoring and training programs to the next wave of leaders. By design, this will not only help existing staff members with a solid career path to travel, but it will also give potential employees a good understanding of your company's policies, procedures and work philosophy.

Mistake #3: Using Overly Subjective Criteria And Unreliable Assessment Tools - We all know that assessing how well an employee will do in the position before they are hired will never be 100% accurate. Many companies rely on personality tests and assessments to help make a final decision. Unfortunately, unless these tests have been through an extensive validation process, using them can be a poor indicators of how successful the new hire will actually perform in the position. Use a behavioral interviewing process; then trust your gut, your team's instincts, and reference check potential employees, adding these behavioral processes along with their test results, so you can make the best decision possible.

Mistake #4: Focusing Too Much On The Basic Requirements Of The Job(s) - Focusing only on managerial and technical skills for the job and not emphasizing less apparent talents, such as morale building or team building skills, can lead to selecting the wrong candidate. Look at the total person who you are considering hiring and their level of emotional intelligence as well as the impact they will have on the team dynamics.

Mistake #5: Giving Inadequate Consideration To People From Outside The Organization - There is nothing wrong with looking toward your current employee workforce to fill a leadership position. As a matter of fact, there are a number of advantages to hiring someone from within the organization. Despite this, many organizations fail to recognize how "new blood" in any organization can bring success. New employees can bring fresh experiences, ideas, energy and, yes, better results.

Executive Summary: When recruiting an employee for a leadership position, one needs to make sure that the roles and how they will be evaluated are clearly defined. It is also important to coach, mentor and train current employees, for they have the potential to step into leadership roles. Yet, while hiring from within an organization can be beneficial, it is also important to not dismiss the option of hiring from outside of the organization. Also, when assessing the success of an employee prior to offering him/her the position, it is important to implement a variety of assessment mediums and to consider less apparent talents, like morale and team building skills.


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