Eric Handler headshot Written by: Eric Handler

How to Avoid a Bad Hire

It’s easy to fall prey to making a bad hire in this highly competitive talent market, particularly for organizations without a clearly identified process for right-fit talent acquisition.

Don’t let that be you.

The No. 1 reason companies make bad hires is the perceived “need to fill a role quickly,” said 43% of respondents to a National Business Research Institute poll. Another 22% cited hiring unqualified candidates, while 13% said it was due to poor candidate sourcing. 

With more than 40 years of experience in executive search, Handler has developed its own proprietary formula, The Top Talent Candidate Predictor, to identify right-fit candidates. Here are three of those principles you can put into practice today:

  • Never Settle. Bad hires result from an approach of best-pick-from-the-applicant-pool instead of waiting for the right-fit. Compromise has its rightful place in business, but none in right-fit talent acquisition
  • Secure the Must-Haves. Some hiring managers fail to distinguish between nice-to-haves and must-haves when identifying the ideal candidate for a position. As a result, they can end up with only the nice-to haves, AKA a bad hire.
  • Feelings Can Fail. We’ve seen hiring managers won over by a candidate’s personality instead of logically securing the trifecta of skills, experience and values-alignment that define a right-fit hire.

Follow these three principles and you’ll improve your ability to make a right-fit hire.

Additional Resource:
Click here to download The Handler Report: The High Cost of Average and The Mindset to Hire Excellence, which includes a checklist to help guide right-fit talent acquisition.