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Employers make lots of mistakes in the process of recruiting, interviewing and hiring new employees.

1. They ask for specific skills

Every manager suffers from astigmatism! They make the mistake of over-narrowing the definition of a job and who can do it. This is the same mistake repeated by the head-hunters, or the placement agencies. A person who hires narrowly may be viewed as one who doesn`t understand the broader requirements of the technology and products he`s working with and this is reason enough to cost him his own job. They forget that when they are hiring, they should look for abilities, and certainly not specific knowledge - which can even be learnt with observation.

2. Human Resources does the recruiting

This is a reason why so many talented professionals are continuously whining. What does bringing in HRD mean to the recruiting process? Simple. They behave like fat-headed bureaucrats mainly concerned about whether you are wearing a tie, polished shoes, etc. Some companies say that the HR department does only the screening, but this is enough to do the damage.

3. Fishing in wrong waters

The traditional recruiting and hiring process is based on a faulty selection model. When a company places a want ad or participates in job fairs to rope in people, it usually affects its outcome - it hires only the people who come along, not those it would like to hire. It is therefore limiting itself more severely than it realises because the best job candidates don`t keep looking for jobs, but they`re available.

4. Distrustful of candidates

The typical job candidate arrives at the job interview knowing only what`s printed in the want ad, and what your HR representative told her. But very few of our interviewers realise that it`s in their best interest to help the candidate prepare for the interview - at least to the extent the candidate is interested in doing so. In fact, your lack of interest in the preparation material or information they are offered should be viewed as a signal.

5. Failure to leverage the interview into other useful contacts

Good human resources representatives or head-hunters sometime ask job candidates to recommend or refer their professional associates for other possible jobs; but this is not the case always with many of our recruiting agencies.

6. They just talk

The single biggest mistake almost all recruiters, HR managers and placement agencies, make in an interview is to spend it all in talking. Taking the candidates to a field visit to the production site, the suppliers, etc never occur to them.

7. Inadequate reference checks

In too many companies, reference checks are entirely inadequate.

8. Unreasonably long decision process

Companies lose good candidates when they hesitate to make decisions. Granted, the interview and decision process takes time, but there is no excuse for not having a decision schedule and sticking to it. The price they pay for treating the hiring process indecisively and the candidates disrespectfully is a bad reputation.

9. Unreasonably long job offer process

If your company does not have a streamlined, fast-track job offer process, create it!

10. Leaving the team out of the loop

They don`t arrange a product demonstration, or let the candidate sit in on a project meeting for a few minutes - and have the other team members ask his opinions. Even if they do, they don`t make it easy and casual.