Cut Bad Hire Costs Using Employee Vetting

Hiring a new member of any team is no easy task. Every company sinks thousands of dollars into each new employee via hiring costs, wages, and training. However, not every employee ends up being the right fit for the job, resulting in a bad hire. According to a December 2012 CareerBuilder survey, these bad hires can cause the company many different issues ranging from poor work quality to workplace turmoil to customer dissatisfaction. Ensuring the individual is a right fit for the organization before bringing them in is essential to prevent both bad hiring costs and hires’ remorse.

Recently, we began writing pieces about employee vetting processes. First we wrote about The Importance of Employee Vetting from a security and image perspective. Then we wrote about The Importance Social Media Policies in the entire employment process from background checks to continuous evaluation. Now we’re going to tackle the issue of cutting your number of bad hires by enhancing your hiring process.

Calculating the Cost of a Bad Hire

To get a basic idea of how much a bad hire can financially cost your company, you can use ADP’s Bad Hire Calculator. Considering the data sources used to compile this tool are approximately 10 years old, the costs of bad hires have likely risen since the formula was created. However, these direct financial costs connected to the hiring process are not the only costs companies pay when they make a bad hire.

One major downside to a bad hire is the negative impact it has on the organization as a whole. Managers report that bad hires ultimately bring a negative influence to the business, cause a decrease in employee morale, and waste managers’ time with unnecessary supervision. When bad hires are let go, it also leaves vacancies in the company which burden the current staff with an extra workload and potentially result in lost opportunities during the replacement hiring cycle.

The Bad Hire Solution: Enhanced Background Checks

When you consider that the costs of a bad hire are in the thousands of dollars, running additional pre-employment screening methods on advanced rounds of candidates is a wise investment. Many employers report they are rushing to hire candidates and lack the intelligence crucial to making wise hiring decisions. You can improve your company’s hiring process by gaining the intelligence you need by creating a comprehensive employee screening solution for your final candidates that will capture the intangibles necessary for the position. There are two main solutions you should consider when enhancing your pre-screening process:

Resume & Application Vetting – With the current state of the economy, employers report that resume fraud is a persistent issue. In order to ensure your candidate was truthful in their resume and on their application, you can vet applications and resumes using a variety of techniques spanning from reference calls to online investigations. Social media sites like LinkedIn can assist with confirming the timeline individuals present on their resume, and you can build networks of coworkers and classmates to demonstrate personal connections to institutions. Finding inconsistencies on resumes can help reduce the amount of candidates in the final rounds of the hiring process and provide crucial intelligence to making the right decision.

Incorporating Social Media Data – It can provide a wealth of information about a candidate’s personality, allowing you to access a rich set of personal information not contained on resumes or applications. Social media can provide you with an inside glimpse into the lives of individuals ranging from their technical ability to their general demeanor and outside interests. It can also give you valuable data about how individuals interact with others and handle adversity and conflict. This data can be crucial to ensuring you hire someone whose personality will mesh with your current staff and can assist with intelligence for your final round of interviews.

While additional screening methods do bring additional costs, if you only run these methods on serious candidates rather than rushing to a decision, you can actually save your company thousands of dollars in bad hiring costs.

Tips & Tricks: Three Easy Ways to Maximize Your Training Experience

Over the past few months, the team has been taking advantage of conferences happening around the state. At the center of all of these conferences were knowledgeable experts speaking and providing training. However, upon examining the materials our team brought back, we found the training was not always up-to-date and usually did not cover new, relevant practices or sources of information. Everything changes quickly on the Internet, whether it is changes in privacy law, new best practices, or the popularity of social media platforms. As investigators and researchers, it is important we budget our time and ensure we are spending our funds wisely to keep abreast of these changes.

Here are some quick easy tips on how to make the most of your training experience.

Vet the Trainer

Beware of self-proclaimed experts. Many individuals actually work in areas tangentially related to the subject of the training. Learning the perspective of the trainer can greatly inform you about what to expect to learn from a training session. In order to ensure the trainer has working knowledge of the subject, research their biographies appearing on websites, news sources, and social media profiles. You can also use information present on conference websites and in related training files (see below) to see if trainers cover material from an angle that matches your needs. Additionally, these sources can give you an idea of when the trainer worked in this field, whether or not they are using up-to-date information and techniques, and if they routinely update materials or simply recycle the same information.

Get Free Materials Using Internet Searches

Many trainers and conferences post documents and videos online which are readily available for use. All you have to do is leverage Internet-based searches to your advantage. Good places to start looking for information are on websites of companies and individuals which provide training, conference websites, and document and video sharing websites. However, sometimes the information is not always easy to find. As training materials are most often posted in .pdf, .ppt, and .pptx formats, using a filetype search on Google can often make all of the difference. While free materials are not always the best materials, finding this information before you purchase training sessions can save you time and money by allowing you to explore your options and vet trainers.

Plan and Engage

The true key to getting the most out of your training experience is planning and preparation. Before you schedule your training regimen, you have to set your goals and measurable outcomes. There are many questions you should ask yourself before you register:

• What skills do you want to work during the training period?
• How will this training help you enhance these skills?
• Are there others in your office that could also benefit from this kind of training?
• What is your expense budget?
• Do you want in-person or webinar training?
• What questions might you have for the trainer on this subject?

Once you find the answers to these questions, you will have a better idea of how you and others in your organization can benefit from training. To enhance your experience at the training session, be attentive, take notes, form questions as issues arise, and ask those questions to the trainer during the session.

Conclusion

In business, you cannot afford to waste time or money. We can use the same skills utilized during investigations to vet out the other areas of business we encounter on a routine basis. All business intelligence is built upon a solid foundation of relevant, up-to-date knowledge and clear objectives. Who you select to teach you these skills can make all of the difference to your long-term success.