An employer’s responsibility to its employees is a legally regulated process. It includes many areas of potential legal entanglements, from hiring and firing decisions to workplace harassment and more. To ensure that all your bases are covered as an employer, it is important to understand the laws that you must follow.
Conversely, what about an employee’s responsibility to their employer? Prevention is a powerful tool, and spotting problematic employees in the hiring process can proactively avoid issues. The human resources department in your company is the first line of defense when avoiding “bad hires.”
How to proactively weed out “bad hires”
It is an unfortunate truth that not all job candidates are fully qualified for the role they are applying to. Here’s how to weed out “bad hires” quickly and efficiently:
- Learn from past hiring mistakes: Every company has unique needs. If you have hired the wrong people in the past, it is beneficial to recognize where the errors were made.
- Scrutinize the resume: Checking on education and past employment can be a great way to spot falsehoods. If a potential employee is willing to lie on their resume, then this could be a red flag for things to come.
- Interview questions: Traditional interview questions can be prepped for with memorized answers. If you want to gain insight into the interviewee, get “out-of-the-box” with your interview questions. Tech giants like Apple and Google have been known for their unorthodox interview questions.
- Teamwork trial: If your corporate culture puts a premium on teamwork, put the candidate in a team working environment on a trial basis. This serves to see if their personality is compatible with your team, and provides valuable feedback from your team members.
It can be difficult to determine which candidates possess the skills, experience and temperament necessary for the job, especially when you have a limited amount of time to interview them. The above tips are a great place to start.
If you feel that you have made the wrong choice in hiring a problematic employee, it may be time to seek professional guidance to ensure that your rights are protected and liabilities are minimized.
