{"id":1178,"date":"2007-09-12T11:35:43","date_gmt":"2007-09-12T16:35:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2007\/09\/9-most-common-hiring-mistakes\/"},"modified":"2007-09-12T11:35:43","modified_gmt":"2007-09-12T16:35:43","slug":"9-most-common-hiring-mistakes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2007\/09\/9-most-common-hiring-mistakes\/","title":{"rendered":"9 Most Common Hiring Mistakes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Relying on the interview, benchmarking top performers, cloning yourself…these are all common mistakes that lead to bad sales hires. These 9 mistakes are provided by ManageSmarter.com’s article<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n
Mistake 1:Relying only on interviews to evaluate a candidate<\/b><\/p>\n
Mistake 2: Using successful people as models<\/b><\/p>\n
Mistake 3: Too many criteria<\/b><\/p>\n
Mistake 4: Evaluating “personality” instead of job skills<\/b><\/p>\n
Mistake 5: Using yourself as an example<\/b><\/p>\n
Mistake 6: Failure to use statistically validated testing to predict job skills most critical to success<\/b><\/p>\n
Mistake 7: Not researching the reasons that people fail<\/b><\/p>\n
Mistake 8: Relying on general “good guy” criteria<\/b><\/p>\n
Mistake 9: Bypassing the reference check<\/b><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
That is a solid list of common mistakes. You can learn more about each one by reading the entire article. I want to zero in on Mistake 2. From the article (emphasis mine):<\/p>\n
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Duplicating success may seem like a good idea, but the reasons people succeed are not clear from just measuring the characteristics of top performers. More important are the differences between top performers and low achievers. For example, a comprehensive study of more than 1,000 sales superstars from 70 companies showed that the top three characteristics shared by high achievers were (1) the belief that salesmanship required strong objection-answering skills, (2) good grooming habits, and (3) conservative dress\u20ac\u201despecially black shoes. Oddly, a study of the weakest performers at those same companies revealed that the same three characteristics were their most common traits as well<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
We ran a similar test on a large sales team years ago and found a similar result. Another factor is a simple one – no two people are the same. The better bet is to identify top traits, skills and motivations and then hire to those factors. This means that the salesperson could have a completely different style, approach and experience. They can still be successful, they will just go about it in a different manner.<\/p>\n
Sometimes this difference is too much for hiring managers which leads to this mistake. I have seen the hiring manager then reduce his or her decision to the salesperson’s style. That could be Mistake 10 in this list.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Relying on the interview, benchmarking top performers, cloning yourself…these are all common mistakes that lead to bad sales hires. These 9 mistakes are provided by ManageSmarter.com’s article: Mistake 1:Relying only on interviews to evaluate a candidate Mistake 2: Using successful people as models Mistake 3: Too many criteria Mistake 4: Evaluating “personality” instead of job skills Mistake 5: Using yourself as an example Mistake 6: Failure to use statistically validated testing to predict job skills most critical to success Mistake 7: Not researching the reasons that people fail Mistake 8: Relying on general “good guy” criteria Mistake 9: Bypassing the reference check That is a solid list of common mistakes. … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"","bgseo_robots_follow":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,16],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5Oho-j0","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1178"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1178\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}