When we look for a job or for employees, mistakes get made on both sides of the process.
A poor cover letter, a badly presented CV or other reasons can mean that, in the end, the chance to find the perfect candidate or the job you want is lost.
Apart from the mistakes listed below, there are others caused by the candidate, such as missing information in the CV, whether in the details of their work experience or their technical knowledge. Sometimes we even come across false information from the candidate. These are mistakes that can lead the hiring company to reject a candidate outright.
Other mistakes include:
Discrimination: perhaps the most dangerous of all, because of what it can entail. It happens rarely, and it very seldom becomes evident.
Besides the typical discrimination on grounds of race, sex, ideology and so on, there can be other kinds based on where someone studied, their previous jobs, and the like. In some cases, physical appearance may be what decides the process, something that will never be apparent from the outside.
Clothing and posture: Although it may seem irrelevant, the clothes you wear to a selection process and the way you carry yourself can be reasons for rejecting an application. In a selection process for salespeople, for example, clothing sets candidates apart and filters them, and posture can in any case rule someone out of the later stages of the process.
Who hires a candidate who turns up to a selection process slouching, with a couldn’t-care-less attitude?
Too many or too few tests: Having too many tests in a selection process is as much a mistake as having too few. A day packed with test after test is a mistake on the part of the organizer.
Putting a candidate through several exams or tests without a break causes fatigue and mistakes that can be decisive and that come down to excessive demands. Short tests give a quantitative but not a qualitative result for the candidate. They can miss knowledge worth assessing, since some of the important aspects of selection (knowledge or experience) may be judged incorrectly.
Tests and special assessments should be complemented with other, more personal criteria that can be defined for each candidate. None of these tests is one hundred percent effective when applied to people.
Not completing the established selection process: Changing a selection process that was defined in advance can produce wrong results. A candidate may appear to meet all the requirements of the job, but if their positions haven’t been properly checked, they can be distorted by personal feelings (mistakes by the recruiter) that give an inaccurate picture of the candidate.
The personal interview: This is the most delicate part of the selection process. The company needs an interviewer who conveys warmth and friendliness, to keep the candidate from getting nervous. But the interviewer also has to be precise and exact when looking into the elements that will shape the final decision.
Despite the interview script, this is the part of the selection process most open to influence and error: everything from how the questions are worded to how the interview is guided can sway the answers and the decision about the candidate.
Featured image: Jérémy Barande / Ecole polytechnique, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
