Choosing a dud candidate is possibly the biggest fear of any hiring manager.
While you might initially think your newest hire is the greatest thing since sliced bread, the cracks start to show when you realise their performance is nowhere near where it needs to be a couple of months in.
While managing an underperforming employee is a whole other kettle of fish, you can avoid the situation entirely by getting your hiring decisions right from the get-go. Here’s how you do it.
Try not to hire in a hurry
A key staff member has just handed you their four weeks’ notice and you’re scrambling to find someone who can step into their shoes as quickly as possible before it impacts the dealership. But here’s the thing: if you hire too quickly, you could end up inflicting far more damage on the business.
Instead, look for alternative ways to manage the departing employee’s workload in the interim, effectively buying yourself more time to conduct a more thorough recruitment process.
Ensure all decision-makers are involved
In every type of business, different roles and responsibilities are assigned to various positions for good reason.
No one individual can have a complete oversight of every aspect of the business all the time. Each manager or decision maker impacted by a hiring decision will have their own unique perspective on what the issues within the business are and the requirements they believe a new hire needs to fulfil to ensure ongoing success.
For this reason, it’s crucially important that all decision makers are involved in the hiring process. This will ensure you have a complete and balanced view of what you’re looking for, allowing you to provide a more accurate assessment of how well each candidate meets those criteria.
Be clear about what you’re looking for
While it might sound obvious, it really is important to make what you’re looking for in a candidate explicitly clear in the job advertisement.
Hire regret doesn’t only arise when an employer is disappointed with an employee’s performance. It can also happen when the dealership or role fails to meet a new employee’s expectations.
Ensuring that you accurately describe the role, responsibilities, and expectations in the job advertisement (and during the interview) is crucial for a candidate to be able to assess whether a role is the right one for them, and whether it’s likely to be a long-lasting and fruitful relationship.
Look beyond experience alone
While it can be tempting to build a comprehensive list of essential experience and qualifications for a position, this can actually do you a disservice.
It’s the age-old question of attitude vs aptitude. In many cases, a candidate that possesses some of what you’re looking for, coupled with a great attitude and plenty of enthusiasm, can prove to be a far better hire in the longer-term compared to a job-ready candidate that’s looking for a sideways move.
Loosening some of the requirements around job criteria could be the thing that opens the door to a larger pool of candidates and helps you find that diamond in the rough.
Always conduct reference checks
When you’ve already made up your mind about a candidate, conducting reference checks can seem like a cumbersome and unnecessary process, but it is an important one.
Remember that reference checks are there to validate a candidate’s claims. While a candidate may have said all the right things in the interview, ultimately you have little proof other than their word that what they’re saying is actually the truth.
Reference checks could be the thing that provide that final tick of approval and reassurance that you’re making the right decision, or they may uncover some issues or concerns that require further investigation. Either way, it’s one step you don’t want to skip if you’re concerned about experiencing hire regret.
Put the candidate to the test
You can only find out so much in an interview setting.
In some cases (and particularly in technical roles), it can be hugely beneficial to put a candidate to the test with a practical exercise. Remember, sometimes the best talkers can be the worst performers.
Putting a candidate to the test in a hands-on scenario will can give you an additional perspective beyond the interview room alone, providing a first-hand view of their skill level, how they like to operate, and how they might interact with colleagues.
Provide adequate training
While we never like to think we could be at fault, in some cases an employee may not be wholly responsible for their underperformance.
As an employer, you need to ensure you provide adequate instruction, training, and support to induct new employees into the business. Even if a new hire is quite experienced, it’s still important to provide ample guidance to help them better understand their role and responsibilities and grasp the culture of the dealership.
If managed effectively, you’re far more likely to get your new recruit operating at peak performance sooner rather than later.
Teamrecruit is Australia’s most established recruitment agency specialising in truck, earthmoving and agricultural machinery dealerships in Australia, New Zealand, the South Pacific and Southeast Asia. Find out more about Teamrecruit and how we support employers and candidates in the dealership industry.
