We have been here since 1952 and have been through literally thousands of hiring processes. We are asked about the biggest and most frequent mistakes that hiring authorities make in the recruiting, interviewing, and hiring process. Here they are:

1. Not having a clear idea of what they are looking for – that everyone understands. Hiring authorities aren’t specific enough about the duties, skills, and competencies they need. They confuse amount of experience with competency: “8 to 10 years of experience” – does that mean that someone with six years of experience can’t do the job? Or what about the candidate who has had one year of experience 10 times? Putting any kind of numbers of years of experience limits them. What is important?

Employers would be better off defining the functions they want done very specifically, and then finding someone who can do it. This may mean someone who has done it well before or someone who has the potential to do it well. The specifics need to be written by the hiring authority who has the “pain,” i.e., the person who needs the help and is going to be responsible for the new employee.

Concocting “wish lists” of super-human attributes, combined with unrealistically low pay scales relative to expectations of the experience needed, will create havoc in a talent search. Hazy, ambiguous descriptions along with generalities like “good written and oral communication skills” don’t help either. Know your target.

2. Having an unrealistic idea of what kind of candidates might be available and the money it may take to hire them. Just because everyone would like to hire Superman or Wonder Woman, that doesn’t mean they are available or will go to work at your company. There is no perfect candidate, and waiting for one is as unrealistic as searching for one.

The only way to become realistic about what the market might bear is to interview enough candidates to know what is available and the commensurate earnings expected. It may take quite a few interviews. The number of quality candidates is drastically lower than it was even two years ago. Our clients are often shocked that the salaries they are locked into won’t allow them to hire the quality or experience they wish for.

And just because you believe that your company is wonderful, it doesn’t mean: (1) everyone wants to go to work there, (2) they will accept any amount you offer, and (3) there aren’t four or five other firms like yours trying to hire the same candidates.

3. Having too many people involved in the interviewing process . . . and the wrong ones. More than a number of studies have shown that hiring is just as successful when one person, the one with the “pain” (i.e., the direct manager), is the only person involved in the hiring process as opposed to more than one. In fact, other studies have shown that once the number of people in the interviewing and hiring process exceeds three, the probability of a bad hire is greater. The reason so many people are usually involved in the interviewing and hiring process is that people, naturally, want to spread the risk. So if it turns out to be a poor hire, people can justify their decision with “Well, you interviewed him too!” Few people have the courage to interview and hire alone and take the responsibility one way or the other, even though better hiring decisions would probably be made.

. . . and the wrong ones. Relying on people to screen, interview, or have a say in the hiring who have no personal, working benefit from the potential new hire’s performance (i.e., their position is in jeopardy if a poor hire is made) is a big mistake. Most managers will claim that hiring good people is the second or third most important function they have, right behind making a profit. We can never figure out why, if this is so, hiring authorities will delegate screening or interviewing of candidates to people, although wonderful people, who have no direct experience, knowledge, or “skin” in the position to be filled. “But I don’t have time to look at résumés and interview all those people,” is what we hear. Well, if hiring is one of a manager’s most important functions, he or she should take the time and make the effort to do the whole job from start to finish. How can they afford not to?

4. Process takes too long. The average manager thinks that it takes about 30 days to fill a vacant position. Try the truth: between 90 and 120! Why? Because folks drag things out that should be simple – not easy, but simple. When the hiring process takes too long, good candidates are lost to more decisive companies, managers look inept at hiring, and it gets harder and harder to fill the vacancy. Managers, again, don’t give this the priority status needed – shown by action, not lip service. Time kills! The “shelf life” of quality candidates is shorter and shorter.

5. Poor interviewing techniques. If hiring authorities would simply write out a simple (or complicated) list of questions and ask every candidate the same questions, record the answers, and compare the responses – quickly – hiring decisions would be easy to make.

“Tell me about yourself” is the first question down the wrong road. Most employers start with that, ask random questions to “get to know the candidate,” make notes on the résumés, and then three weeks later try to compare the candidates. They often spend hours with candidates and don’t remember the differences between them.

A structured, disciplined interview technique that is applied to every candidate in exactly the same manner is the only real way to compare candidates. It is so simple and yet so seldom practiced. (We have samples of structured interviews for the asking.)

6. Interviewing or not interviewing a candidate on the basis of a résumé! Forty percent of hiring a person is based on personality and chemistry! Then why do people rely on résumés instead of interviews? Because they don’t know how to use a résumé.

I can’t tell you how many phenomenal candidates get eliminated because of a résumé and how many poor performers get interviewed because of a well-written résumé. “But I can’t interview every résumé I get!” OK, right. But if a candidate even looks like a possibility of being a good one, at least pick up the phone and spend 15 or 20 minutes with him or her. Or, better yet, spend 30 minutes face to face with them. Get a quick take on who they are and what they can do. Do this with a number of candidates. You can then thoroughly interview the ones that are the best for your situation. This method is quick and efficient, but it takes discipline – no more than 30 minutes on the first one!

Hiring authorities and screeners put way too much emphasis on what is on a résumé. They try to judge the total quality of a candidate by a résumé. A résumé is a “go by.” It should simply define a candidate as a “possibility”- and a broad possibility at that. The interviews have to be the qualifiers.

People who “qualify” a candidate and decide how he or she is going to perform should read Tony Romo’s résumé a nobody; or Kurt Warner’s – a bagger at a grocery store; or Abe Lincoln’s – many failures. Don’t rely on résumés!

7. Not interviewing enough candidates – or interviewing way too many. Most hiring managers err on the “too few” end of the spectrum. “I want to talk to the three best candidates!” “I don’t have time to talk to everybody!” No one person other than a hiring authority can tell who is “best.” Three or four is usually too few. The “bell curve” for most professional hires is about 9 or 10 candidates. This, of course, depends on the level of job and the availability of certain types of candidates. The key is to know what kind of availability there is in the marketplace for the kind of person being sought. Our banking division, for instance, may be lucky to find three or four qualified VPs at any one time. A mid-level sales position may require 10 or 12 candidates. Even recruiting a number of quality candidates for administrative positions, which traditionally would bear many quality candidates, isn’t as easy to do in this market.

The key is to interview a range of quality candidates and know what is available. If you want to wait for superman or superwoman, I guess it’s OK. It just depends on how badly you need to hire someone. Just be sure you know, firsthand, the quality of candidates on the market. The only way to do that is to do your own interviewing of the numbers necessary and available.

The other end of the spectrum is the hiring authority who wants to interview forever, thinking unrealistically that the quality of candidates will get better the more that are interviewed and the longer it takes. All too often, we hear from hiring authorities, “We have interviewed 20, 25, or 30 candidates.” There is something wrong here. They exhaust themselves in a “process,” forgetting the result, and then complain about it. It doesn’t get a good employee. They confuse activity with productivity.

Interview the number of candidates necessary. Don’t make the mistake on either end of the spectrum.

8. Not communicating with candidates after interviews and not giving honest feedback. For some reason, hiring authorities don’t seem to mind being rude – even to candidates they are interested in hiring. Everyone is busy. The truth is that, to a candidate looking for a job, whether presently employed or not, finding a job is a very high priority. To a hiring authority, in spite of the lip service about how important hiring is, it is simply one of their functions. Hiring is a risk. Most employers don’t really like doing it. So the process often gets postponed, sloppy, and rather unprofessional.

As the market tightens, quality candidates will have many suitors. A good candidate will simply lose interest in a possibly good opportunity if they are treated rudely. We have had many candidates elect to pursue opportunities simply because they were treated with respect and courtesy.

Also, if the candidate isn’t going to be considered, he or she should be told as soon as possible. We are amazed at the number of hiring authorities who won’t return a candidate’s call, or multiple calls, just to say that they have found a more suitable candidate. We never know when that kind of lack of courtesy will come back to us. Years ago, I had a candidate who was rudely ignored by a hiring authority. A few years later, the roles were reversed. The candidate was now a hiring authority, and when I tried to get him to see my candidate, the hiring authority of a few years ago, my client laughed and said no with vengeful glee. He remembered how he had been treated. What goes around often comes around.

9. Not selling the job and the company. Although this isn’t the biggest mistake hiring authorities make, it is certainly the most prevalent one. We can never figure out why, in trying to find the best talent available, hiring authorities act as if they are doing someone a favor by granting them the privilege of an interview. They act as though they have the only job on the planet, and candidates are begging to work there. Wrong! Good candidates will have many choices. The days of the early 2000s, when there were endless numbers of candidates, are gone. The company and the hiring authorities that sell their job the best will hire the best talent. It is a candidate-driven market. We can also forget lowball offers, poor benefits, or a “take it or leave it” attitude when making an offer.

10. Not having “backup” candidates. This means continuing to interview even though a great candidate may have been found. In fact, we recommend having three great candidates in the queue.

As happens too often, a hiring authority zeroes in on one candidate, and as the interviewing process drags on (see #4), the hiring authority quits interviewing because it is a pain. They get to the end of the process, make an offer, and it isn’t accepted. The frustration of having to start all over is astounding. So the solution is to keep interviewing until someone is hired – and has started the job. We simply expect that a good candidate is going to get multiple offers.

10 (a) Not firing a new hire when the hiring is obviously a mistake. This is a tough mistake to make. Everyone wants to see a new employee make it. But too often, cutting new hires too much slack because they are new is a mistake. The numbers of failed new hires we have seen that were let go or quit six or seven months after their hiring, with the hiring authority complaining, “I saw it in the first week!” would make us all cry. It becomes disruptive to the business, it destroys the chemistry of the employees working with the new hire, and worst of all, everyone can detect it, but the hiring authority chooses to overlook it. Respect for the hiring authority diminishes, and eventually the new employee leaves or is fired.

The solution that better hiring authorities adopt is to keep new employees in line in the very beginning, even “over manage” a bit. If disregard for company policies, or poor work habits, like showing up late, missing work, having numerous “personal” problems, emerge in the first few weeks of employment, it isn’t going to get any better. Besides, the “honeymoon” isn’t even over.

There is a big difference between “rookie” mistakes and poor work habits, low integrity, bad manners, or serious personal problems that impinge on work. Even the most rigorous interviewing process and extensive reference, background, and credit checking can’t prevent this from happening.

One of the most successful hiring authorities we worked with years ago had a great philosophy. He was the most successful general manager of a nationwide insurance company. And he was that for 15 years in a row. He managed 110 people, directly and indirectly. He told me one time that he wasn’t successful because he hired better people than the other GMs around the country. The difference was that he fired people “when he first got the inkling.” He simply didn’t waste his time on people he knew weren’t going to make it.

The sense of when to fire a new employee is personal. Good managers know when to do it. Hire carefully, but fire quickly! If a bad hire is made, eliminate it quickly. The hiring authority will look like a true manager, and everyone is better off.

Tony Beshara is a legendary big biller and heavy hitter. He has been a major player in the search and placement business since 1973 and is the owner of Babich & Associates, in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. He authored “The Job Search Solution” and has appeared on the Dr. Phil show several times. His new book, just released, is “Acing the Interview.” It’s chock-full of information for the job seeker, and I give it a two thumbs up for everyone in our business as well. Over 450 questions (and the optimum answers) are included. Available at your local bookstore or through Amazon.com, Barnesandnoble.com, and other Internet book-selling sites at an amazingly inexpensive price.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Amidst making over a dozen placements a month, writing books, motivating employees and running a multi-office business, it’s hard to imagine how one person can continue his extraordinary accomplishments year after year. Tony’s success and how he does what he does is one of the most asked questions from readers so we asked him to describe a typical day for us. We appreciate the time he devoted in an otherwise busy schedule.

“Let me first begin by saying that I certainly don’t mind sharing with your readers how my day goes. I do want to emphasize that my system is certainly not “the” way… it is a way. If this explanation helps others learn to, it is a good thing.

My system is available to individuals who might like to start an organization. We have developed a partnership program with 80% ownership to the managing partner and 20% ownership to my organization. It is not a franchise. It is a partnership. I take on the responsibility of all of the training, accounting and mentoring anyone would need. The only thing I don’t do is dial the phone for them.”

My day:

5:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m. Wake up and over a very quiet cup of coffee offer gratitude for the day, pray, read some kind of spiritual material (i.e., the Bible, lives of the Saints books about religious topics) … somewhere in here I am joined by my wife and we both pray and contemplate the day. I spend 20 minutes in formal meditation (I learned Transcendental Meditation 35 years ago and still practice it.)

6:00 a.m. to 6:30 a.m. Recite my yearly goals as affirmations at least three times. Shower and dress for the day.

6:30 a.m. Light breakfast … low carb type, Starbucks and go to the office. I’m constantly listening to motivational stuff (i.e., Norman Vincent Peale, Jim Rhone, Tony Robbins, Brian Tracy, Ed Foreman, Zig Ziglar etc.) I stay away from the radio and the news ’cause it usually bad.

6:45 a.m. to 7:00 a.m. Review my plan for the day. Review everyone in the organization’s ‘numbers’ from the previous day (i.e., number of phone calls, hours on the phone, send outs, placements, etc.)

7:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. Do any follow-up phone calls from yesterday’s activity that I can with candidates. I may prepare candidates for the interviews that they have, either for today or tomorrow …. each one of these takes 10 to 20 minutes – sometimes longer. I will meet with any of our placement managers or rookies who might need help. These are short and very to the point meetings because they know that I need to be on the phone.

8:00 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday we have a training meeting with all of the placement managers. We videoconference the meeting to our office in Fort Worth. We currently have 20 recruiters. The topics of discussion are current and, often times, precipitated by an article from The Fordyce Letter. Our meetings get pretty intense because I’m gently but firmly pushing people to do better all the time. I expect everyone to be on the phone for at least three to four hours a day and logging a minimum of a hundred calls. They don’t always do that, but we talk about all of the issues that go into the placement process. They know that is what is expected.

8:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. I pound the phone. My goal for the day is to get one job order and nine send outs (i.e., we define a send out as an original appointment for a candidate with an original employer). [This is a goal. I don’t always reach it.] In the morning, I spend most of my time cold calling organizations from whom I do not currently have job orders. I work high-tech sales people 95% in Dallas, 5% in Austin and Houston. I have lists of all of the software, hardware, IT Services (who have offices in Dallas/Ft.Worth), and vendors throughout the United States. I cold call and ask for the vice president of sales. I present candidates with backgrounds they would be interested in. If I don’t speak to them directly, I leave a voicemail explaining what kind of candidate I might have. If I don’t get a response I may call four or five times over the course of two or three weeks and, if I get no callback, I just assume they have no ‘pain’ in Dallas.

I also spend an hour or so of this time recruiting … kind of! I have 3,943 software sales people in a database that I have personally interviewed, face to face, over the past 15 years. (This does not include IT services sales people, hardware sales people and other various and sundry high-tech sales people.) I say I recruit “kind of” because I’ve met so many people that it is a matter of finding where they are presently working and what they’re doing and then finding out if they might be interested in an opportunity. There are still a great number of high-tech sales people out there that I have not met, which makes it interesting and fun. 75% of the candidates I am presently working with, I have worked with before. 25% are new to me. Some of my candidates are more “active” than others; i.e., the happier they are with what they have when I call them, the less likely they are to want to interview with new opportunities that I may find. I probably ‘juggl’” 200 or so candidates at a time and try to have actively ‘pending’ 75 or 80 at one time (i.e., actively interviewing with one or more opportunities).

Although I shoot for getting one job order a day, my average is usually 0.5. If I get a job order I try to get the employer to pin down a time when he or she can interview people and then try to line up as many interviews as I possibly can. 60 percent of the time I have to go through the ‘resume routine’ of emailing resumes, then following up and convincing the hiring authority to see my candidates …. as many as I can sell. Since I’ve met almost every candidate that I represent, I am pretty forceful about pushing the hiring authority to interview based on my knowledge of them regardless of what the resume says. I probably email 30 to 40 resumes a day (one of our admins actually physically emails them to the hiring authority in the ACT database. I don’t do it myself …takes too much time). 30% of the time I make the candidate rewrite the resume to fit the job order to which I am referring them. I don’t call candidates before I send their resume … I don’t have that kind of time. I tell my candidates that if I get them an interview and they don’t want to go, they don’t have to. It doesn’t happen but maybe 5% of the time I can’t get a candidate to at least go on an interview. If it happens more than twice, I will assume that the candidate doesn’t have enough ‘pain’ and he’s not serious about changing jobs. By the way, 85% of my candidates are presently employed but looking for a new job for one reason or another and 15% are out of work.

My calls are intense and to the point. 35% to 40% of the people that I cold call, I’ve either talked to or tried to cold call before. I focus on people who have given me a job order recently, that is the last six or seven months, in the afternoon. The morning is devoted to finding really ‘new’ opportunities.

I don’t mind if candidates call to check with me after an interview and I will do some follow-up calls with employers during this time. But most of the time is spent generating new opportunities. If I ‘follow up’ too much, I get out of ‘flow.’

Mantra: If it isn’t getting me a sendout. or a placement ….. why am I making the call?

The most important thing that I can do during the day is to make as many sendouts as possible. By focusing on the process, the result takes care of itself. I can’t control placements as much as I can control sendouts. If I get enough sendouts, I’m going to make a certain number of placements. It took me 9.16 sendouts for every placement last year. It was 12 the year before that and 16 the year before that. I make the maximum number of sendouts and then push them through.

11:30 Interview a candidate
12:00 Interview a candidate
12:30 Interview a candidate

2 out of 3 interviews are face-to-face. One will be a phone interview with an out of town (Austin or Houston) candidate or a local person with whom I might have interviewed face-to-face in the past but now need to update their information. This would include folks I have ‘recruited’ when they weren’t looking but are now interested in what I have called about.

1:15 to 2pm I meditate again for 20 min. and then eat a light lunch (no carbs) for 20 min.

2pm…Back on the phone. I do exactly the same thing that I did in the morning, except my calls for ‘new’ opportunities are to people who have given me an opportunity before. Many of them are always willing to talk to a real solid candidate when I have one. Some of the firms I work with only have one person in DFW. Some have as many as 40 or 50. The idea is to keep in touch with them to see when and if they need someone. I also ask for lots of referrals of candidates. My calls to these people are to both ‘recruit’ for referrals and to get any openings they may have. My relationship with these people is longer than it is with their firms. Today they need me to find them candidates; tomorrow they are the candidate, or they can refer someone to me. It is all the same. So, my ‘marketing’ calls to my employers also become recruiting calls. Since our business is almost all local, 75% of the people in high-tech sales know me and I know them. There are some I have to “recruit” cold, but I usually have some referral name. My calls are about 70% to people that I have at least talked to before and about 30% to those I haven’t.

4:45 Meet with our Controller …go over the “financials” of the day …collections, problems, etc.

5pm. to 6 pm Meet with rookies to cover their day and ask them what they learned. (30 minutes) then follow up with candidates and employers or prep candidates for interviews.

6pm to 6:15pm Pack up …go home

6:30 to 8pm Dinner with my lovely bride of 37 years (best part of the day) … she is the wind beneath my wings … kids are all grown and out of the house.

8:15 to 9 Ride the stationary bike while watching basketball or reading a book.

9pm to 10pm (Monday thru Thursday) Go to desk at home … follow up with candidates and employers … prep candidates … plan tomorrow. We have a very elaborate planning system. It is both automated and manual. It takes at least 30 minutes.

10pm Mental reflections of the day …gratitude and thanks given to God for everything … prayer … sleep

Notes: This is a system of making placements. I work a system and the system works for me and my employers. Most people in this profession focus too much on ‘making a placement’ instead of working a system. A person can ‘run’ this system very, very fast and efficiently … if they want to. [With me out of the equation, our experienced folks (those beyond one year of experience) averaged 4.5 placements a month last year. The economy is back! This year has started off with a BIG bang …one of the guys that has only been here 13 months billed just under $300,000 in his first 12 months and had already billed $96,000 by the 18th of February.. This system will work for others too!] As long as the economy holds, we will make up for the last three or four very difficult years.

I am constantly refining the training system since we bought Babich and Associates in 1989. It is an elaborate one …all on video, with five manuals … it is very complete. I don’t spend much time with ‘rookies’ until they have been here 90 days or more. That way I don’t have to invest in folks who aren’t going to make it. We have a very elaborate system of detecting/discovering good recruiters, so we don’t make many mistakes in hiring. But, even though I can measure a person’s ability, I can’t measure their work ethic, integrity and character. When they do exactly what they are supposed to do for 90 days with the training program and minimal mentoring on my part, I will then invest more effort if they prove themselves. (Our average recruiter has been here 7 years) The most important aspect of this is that I set the pace. I don’t expect everyone to do what I do, but they can follow me and be successful. The ‘tail’ never wags the dog! I am a mentor more than I am a boss. In fact, I wouldn’t do as well as I do if I wasn’t ‘teaching’ the system. (The teacher always learns more than the student.)

Even though I am the top producer, I only billed 20% of the revenues of the company last year. I have a moral obligation to help my associates as much as possible, but they have to do the dialing and make the send outs.

I don’t ‘press the flesh’ with candidates or hiring authorities. I do meet my candidates at least once 90% of the time, to be interviewed only, but I never socialize with anyone. I love people but I don’t always like them. In reality all these folks care about is getting good service from me. If I find them a great candidate or a great job, I’m a hero. If I don’t, I’m not. What they think of me is as good as the last good candidate they hired or the last good job I got them. Their loyalty is as long as their nose. I don’t expect anything from them other than a ‘shot at the plate.’ If I don’t hit the ball, it’s nobody’s fault but mine.

I’m nice to everyone but I will make it clear to my associates not to waste my time. If they need me to help them strategize, I’m available. We do not have doors on our offices, but we do have private offices… (I built the building). Anyone can come into my office at any time. If I’m on the phone and can’t talk to them, they either have to wait or come back.

We have had few collection problems …thank God. I had to sue 10 companies last year. Got paid on all of them, but not the whole fee. Our attorney has been working for us for 25 years. He knows just how to do it. I don’t want to go to court … waste of time … so we usually settle before we get that far. I don’t fret over them much. Our assistant controller is tough as nails. When she can’t get it, I turn it over to our attorney. We lost about 1% of the revenues.

My relaxation and recreation is to simply be with my lovely wife. We love any family oriented activity with our four wonderful sons. I do like to write. Thank God she is willing to edit! I’m the luckiest guy in the world. I have a wonderful wife and family. God has given me gifts that I get to use every day.

2001 to 2004 were very rough years. It was for everyone in this profession. We are extremely thankful that times are better now. There are still lessons to be learned. Some days I think I have no idea what I’m doing, other days I can’t believe that what I said or did worked so well. There is still a tremendous mystery to this profession. I’m not sure I will ever really master it.