As a business owner, there will be times when you have to hire new employees. It doesn’t matter if you are hiring your very first employees or new team members a few years down the line. You will still need to go through the process of shortlisting and interviewing potential candidates.
During this process, business owners often rely on their intuition and the first impressions from an interview. This can work great along with the information you collect during your interaction with the candidate. However, there will likely be some candidates who try to bluff their way through just to get the job.
It might seem harmless at first because who hasn’t exaggerated their strengths in an interview, right? Well, it can be more dangerous than that. Read on to find out how.
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What are the Implications of Hiring a Bad Candidate?
In most business contexts, the maximum damage a bad employee can do is lead to loss of profits through incompetence or malicious behavior.
You might lose important clients and your reputation, but there isn’t much worse that can happen. However, some lines of work require skilled, diligent, and careful employees, and failure can have serious consequences.
There are many industries that rely on strict adherence to regulations and codes. Pharmaceuticals and healthcare are obvious examples. An employee that bungles something up in these fields can open the entire company up to legal action and lawsuits.
Similarly, the world of finance and legal practice are other areas where mistakes can cause the employer to run into serious legal issues.
For instance, if you hire a lawyer to work on a case and it turns out that they tampered with evidence or tried to influence the jury, it could permanently ruin your firm and even open you up to prosecution. Thus, it makes sense to take steps to ensure you are hiring the right people.
Conduct Background Checks
Some places need background checks more than others, and while the type of industry matters when it comes to requiring background checks, location also plays a major role.
If you happen to live in a city like Florida that is known for its high crime rates and you suspect that a potential employee may have a criminal record, it makes a lot of sense to hire a private investigator in Orlando, Florida. Unfortunately, Orlando is a city that boasts a 98.80% crime rate, a figure far higher than the rest of the country.
If you are an employer living in a high crime rate area like Orlando, it becomes necessary to know everything about a potential recruit. Are they who they say they are? Do they have any connection with gangs or a history of violence? Have they been fired from their previous positions due to a gross violation of rules or laws?
Getting a background check done is imperative in such situations. It shouldn’t be too difficult to find a good service in places like Orlando as well. ACES by Henry Mota is a relatively well-known option that serves the central Florida region and offers background checks and other detective services.
Implement a Trial or Probation Period
Just because a person has managed to complete the interview without raising any suspicions about their behavior or character, they aren’t in the clear just yet. Testing potential employees by hiring them on a probation period can be a wonderful way to gain a realistic picture of their abilities in your specific work context.
Such a trial period might last anywhere from one week to ninety days and can help in evaluating their performance, suitability, and ability to work in a team. With this approach, you have the benefit of always being able to drop them if you are unsatisfied. This can save you a lot of time, effort, and legal troubles in the long run.
Take the Effort to Contact References
Too often, employers don’t have the time to go about contacting references listed in a resume. Candidates are aware of this and may rely on you not bothering to verify them. Some employers believe that verifying references is pointless as people only list contacts that will speak positively about them.
However, it can still be beneficial, as it can provide you with additional context about the candidate. This mainly depends on if you know how to ask the right questions. It is a good idea to enquire about the candidate’s work style, interpersonal skills, leadership potential, as well as their overall impressions of the person in question.
Of course, you will want to take everything they say with a grain of salt. However, once you gain a bit of experience in interviewing people, it becomes easy to tell when exaggeration is occurring.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, hiring a new employee shouldn’t be an act that ends up causing you and your firm extra stress. Remember to be wise and realize that when hiring in high crime rate areas, it becomes necessary to take extra steps to ensure that you aren’t going to open your company up to liabilities.
Verifying references, conducting background checks, and hiring employees on a probation period can all be great ways of lowering the many risks that come with new employees.