The 10 Biggest Hiring Mistakes and How to Avoid Them - Transmission Digest

The 10 Biggest Hiring Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Truly one of the greatest shortcomings owners and managers possess is the ability to make hiring decisions on the basis of concrete evidence that a job candidate will indeed be ready, willing and able to perform the tasks for which he or she is being employed. When someone leaves or when the shop gets really busy, we tend to panic and look for any warm body to take the place of the missing person or fill the open slot. Additionally, in a labor market that is so tight for our particular industry, our mistakes can be exaggerated far beyond the norm. These mistakes can cost many thousands of dollars and can even put us out of business in some extreme cases.

The 10 Biggest Hiring Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

It’s Your Business

Subject: Avoiding mistakes in hiring employees
Essential Reading: Shop Owner
Author: Terry Greenhut, Transmission Digest Business Editor

“Hire in haste; pay the price later.”

It’s Your Business

  • Subject: Avoiding mistakes in hiring employees
  • Essential Reading: Shop Owner
  • Author: Terry Greenhut, Transmission Digest Business Editor

“Hire in haste; pay the price later.”

Truly one of the greatest shortcomings owners and managers possess is the ability to make hiring decisions on the basis of concrete evidence that a job candidate will indeed be ready, willing and able to perform the tasks for which he or she is being employed. When someone leaves or when the shop gets really busy, we tend to panic and look for any warm body to take the place of the missing person or fill the open slot. Additionally, in a labor market that is so tight for our particular industry, our mistakes can be exaggerated far beyond the norm. These mistakes can cost many thousands of dollars and can even put us out of business in some extreme cases.

Take the case of hiring a manager whose reputation is a little shaky. The owner knew it but he also had heard that this manager got big numbers for the jobs he sold. So with one eye closed he hired this guy, who proceeded to get into fights with his customers, had him spending at least one day a week in court and generally ruined the reputation of a shop that had been building a good one for many years. The owner defended his hiring decision by saying that there just wasn’t anybody out there to hire. He would have been far better off doing the job himself for a while longer until the right person came along. He knows that now but estimates the lesson at about $100,000 and still climbing – a big price to pay.

The cost of employee turnover is about 40% of annual salary in direct dollars but adds up to a lot more from other contingencies. Keep in mind that every time an employee leaves there is a loss of productivity while you’re finding another one, there are advertising costs, labor to interview and training to get the new hire up to speed. Although there are many things that owners can do to minimize turnover, making the right hiring decisions rates pretty high among them.

Following are the top 10 hiring mistakes and suggestions on how to avoid the pitfalls.

TEN: Hiring by feel

Although experience and intuition are important because they are generally based on previous situations, so are more-reliable and valid means of collecting data such as testing, asking for certifications, and checking on schools attended and work experience.

NINE: Not knowing the exact type of person you want

If you don’t know where you want to go, any road will get you there. List the qualifications you want and expect any candidate to have. Ask yourself: “In this upcoming marriage what can I and what can I not tolerate? What would upset me most, and what would make me uneasy with this person on a daily basis?” For example, if lateness or absences really bother you, let it be known up front and ask candidates about their record in those areas in their previous employment. Ask whether there is anything they know of that would keep them from showing up every day or arriving on time. Remember that little annoyances tend to grow into big problems as the marriage matures. You don’t want to wind up like some owners, who try to enjoy their Sunday evening only to have the dread of facing some employee the next morning ruin their entire weekend.

EIGHT: Never taking control of the interview

The primary objective in a sales interview is to take control by asking questions. The same thing goes for a hiring interview. The person asking the questions is always in control of any conversation, because the normal human response to being questioned is to think about an answer, and that puts the questioner in control. Ask lots of questions, but it would be best to confine them to the job description for which you are hiring and to claims and statements made by the prospect on the job application.

  • Much care should be taken not to ask questions that might put you in jeopardy of violating any federal or state regulations. If you aren’t sure what’s OK and what’s not OK to ask, check with your legal adviser.

SEVEN: Talking too much and listening too little

Most candidates who are being interviewed are in some degree of fear. As such, they will tend to be rather quiet. This can force the interviewer to talk more than necessary, trying to fill in the silences. Try asking questions that require longer answers. Let the prospect feel comfortable enough to start to tell you his or her story. Then use your listening skills to glean the words and phrases that will tell you what this candidate is truly about. In selling, we know that if we ask enough of the right questions and listen carefully the customer will always, at some point, tell us how to close the sale. It’s the same in a hiring interview. Give candidates enough time, ask enough of the right questions, and at some point they will either qualify or disqualify themselves.

SIX: Taking candidates at their word

You know the expression: “Buyers are liars.” Well, so are many job applicants. They lie on their résumés about schools they’ve attended and graduated from, about the type of previous employment they have had, and sometimes about their criminal records. How many installers over the years became instant rebuilders just by telling the next employer, “Sure, I rebuilt lots of units on my last job”? If the owner didn’t know enough to ask the right questions he would wind up paying an awful lot for the employee’s learning curve. Just remember that any résumé that sounds too good to be true probably is. Check everything.

FIVE: Giving in to the pressure of need

The vast majority of owners and managers in the automotive trades hire too quickly and fire too slowly. It is rare that more than one hiring interview takes place with each candidate, and it is almost as rare that more than one or two candidates are considered for an opened position. Larger companies find it far more successful to use the 3x3x3 rule: Have three different employees interview three different candidates at three different times. If this sounds like a lot of work, it is; but it isn’t as much work or as costly as making wrong hiring decisions and having to redo them later.

The other mistake is keeping on the payroll an employee who isn’t right for the job, who has inflated credentials, isn’t productive or is upsetting the workflow of the shop. We all love to hire and hate to fire. When we fire we feel as if we are taking away someone’s livelihood, and we all find that very discomforting, but when an employee doesn’t live up to the claims that he or she made during the hiring process it isn’t your fault. Sometimes we don’t have the book to read; all we get to see is the cover. We find out what’s inside later.

FOUR: Trying to sell the job to the candidate

In a tight labor market it’s what owners and managers tend to do. They go overboard in selling the features and benefits of working for their company. A look around any automotive shop will pretty much indicate to prospects what the working conditions are, especially if they get to hang around and watch for a while, which they should. It will show them how supervisors treat employees and what type of performance will be expected of them. Salary and benefits will be stated but may come down to a negotiation between prospects and management. You don’t need to oversell the position.

THREE: Asking questions that have no true purpose

Asking questions that don’t pertain directly to the type of work that will be performed is a waste of good interview time. If you’re hiring a rebuilder or troubleshooter, ask what’s applied in second gear, drive range, on a 4L60-E, or how you would hook up a scan tool to a 2004 Ford Taurus. Try asking tricky questions that only someone with good experience would be able to answer (if the candidate claims to have a lot of experience). Questions about which hard parts normally go bad in certain transmissions usually will indicate how many of them the candidate has seen.

TWO: Only listening to the candidate’s words

More than 90% of communication is non-verbal. Although people can memorize the right words to say, they have a lot more trouble trying to “can” the way they act. There are lots of visual and verbal cues you can take from the candidate if you watch closely and listen carefully. Look for good eye contact. If they won’t give it to you they usually are lying or trying to hide something. Check posture. Does the candidate sit up, lean a little forward, have eyes wide open and display an appropriate level of enthusiasm? Does the candidate speak at a normal rate or too slowly (which could be an indicator of a slow processor) or too fast (which might indicate someone who races through a job and might not be as thorough as you might like). In the case of hiring a manager or service adviser the speech pattern can give clues as to what type of salesperson the prospect will be. In this business we know that fast talkers generally will get you in trouble and slow talkers may not have the answers to objections ready when they need them.

ONE: Hiring on the spot

Truly the No. 1 biggest hiring mistake is to tell the candidate that he or she has the job right after the interview. It makes you look needy. That will put you in a weak position in dealing with this employee for a long time to come. It also indicates that the job isn’t all that great if you are willing to hire that quickly. The best move is to tell prospects that you have several others to interview and that you will get back to them within the next couple of days, even if you don’t have any other candidates at the moment. The longer it takes, the more they think they’ve won something valuable when you hire them. Don’t wait too long, though. You don’t want to let a good one get away.

Remember that the mistakes you make in hiring will have long-term detrimental effects, so be careful. Take at least as much time and put at least as much thought into hiring an employee as you would in buying an expensive piece of equipment. You might believe that investing in a $50,000 piece of equipment is a huge commitment, but it’s a one-time $50,000 shot. Hiring an employee can be an investment of $50,000 or more a year depending on the employee’s productivity and comeback rate. So don’t you think that you should take great care and put a whole lot of thought into such an expensive decision?

Visit www.TerryGreenhut.com

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