Four Thousand, One Hundred and Twenty-Nine Dollars ($4,129)! According to the Human Capital Benchmarking Report by SHRM, that’s how much it would cost you on average to hire a new employee. This is quite a lot of money to invest on the wrong hire. Therefore, you must make a conscious effort to hire the best candidates to fill open positions in your organization. Here are common hiring mistakes plus what to do instead to ensure the ideal individual fulfills your role and fits with your medical business culture.
1. Fast-Tracking The Hiring Process
This mistake is probably the most common hiring folly often made. You need someone to fill an open position ASAP, so you fast-track the recruitment process and hire a candidate immediately. Unfortunately, this may mean skipping necessary hiring steps and ending up recruiting the wrong candidate for the position.
What To Do Instead: Follow each step of the hiring process, including assessment tests, one-on-one interviews, and extensive background checks. If your intuition gives you an inkling something is off, listen closely!
2. Trying to Cut Cost
This mistake is the “penny wise, pounds foolish” of hiring. In a bid to save money, you may have hired a less qualified candidate, believing they cost less and can fulfill the role just fine. Then, you and your team end up spending more money to train the individual for the position. Not to mention the cost of fixing avoidable mistakes caused by the wrong employee in the wrong position.
What To Do Instead: Don’t be frugal! Hire very competent persons with the skills you deem critical to the role, even if it costs you more. It will save you more money in the long run. On a side note, there may be cases in which the candidate has excellent soft skills and traits but may not be up to speed on the technical skills. Use your judgment to determine if this type of individual will be a good investment.
3. Falling for Exaggerations
We are in the age where personal branding sells. Almost everyone is faking it till they make it, and job seekers are not left behind. Some candidates are masters at acing interviews. They exaggerate their skills and oversell their competence to impress the interviewer and you.
What To Do Instead: Don’t ask traditional interview questions. Go for open-ended, practical or problem-solving questions. This will provide clues to personality traits, biases, and how a person listens/interprets your questions.
4. Focusing on Experience & Skills Only
In the past, your healthcare practice's hiring may have concentrated on candidates’ qualifications and given a back seat to personality and character. This mistake results in hiring someone whose personality may clash with your company culture. Imagine hiring someone with a string of acronyms after their name with years of experience, but who can’t seem to interact with co-workers and clients.
What To Do Instead: Administer a personality test before hiring. With this, you’d know if their personalities fit the role and match your organization’s culture. Also, if this person made your short list, invest the time to get a sense of the "real" person behind the interview façade.
5. Ignoring Emotional Intelligence
While fancy degrees, experiences and skills are essential parts of hiring the right candidate, emotional intelligence is equally just as important if not more so. An employee that lacks emotional intelligence is likely not to be empathetic nor self-aware. Hence, they may have trouble managing their emotions under stress, as well as managing situations with colleagues and clients professionally.
What To Do Instead: Administer an emotional intelligence test alongside your competence assessment test. Also, during the interview process, take note of the the candidate's silent responses i.e. body language and reactions in response to your questions.
6. Failing To Define Candidate’s Attributes
Every role requires different attributes for a person to excel at it. Often, employers forget to define what vital personal attributes a candidate must have to function in the job role. Instead, more focus is spent on defining the job description. Again, this may result in hiring someone whose style of getting the job done may not align with your practice's culture.
What To Do Instead: Look for personal traits needed to fill a role. Does the role require a person who prefers to work alone or one who is a team player?
7. Keeping Bad Hires
Lastly, you may be reluctant to replace a bad hire – perhaps because of limited resources such as time and money or because you've settled. What happens? The employee continues to deliver subpar performance, affecting business productivity. In some cases, the wrong hire may be toxic and increase the stress levels of other staff.
What To Do Instead: Hire slow and fire fast. Get rid of subpar performers and toxic employees and take the time to hire only those who fit your needs and company culture.
The quality of your employees directly influences your business success. Thus, you must ensure you hire the ideal candidates by avoiding these mistakes. If you’re frustrated with the headaches of hiring to recruit a collections staff for your healthcare company, reach out to us for help in boosting collections and accounts receivable management services, enabling additional revenue cycle efficiency.