When your company needs to make a new hire within the IT or development team, it is sometimes tempting to rush through the process. You need to get someone in quickly who can start performing the technical complexities of the job, and as a result, you might not take an adequate amount of time during hiring phase to fully vet the tech candidates that applied. While this may help you in the short term – by allowing your company to operate at full capacity sooner rather than later – it may not be the best decision in the long run. When you rush through the IT hiring process, you are more likely to make a bad hire, and as a result, cause more problems down the road.
Consequences of a speedy hire
By rushing through the hiring process of a tech candidate, you are increasing the chances that the person you pick will not be the best person for the job. This could set off a chain of events that ultimately leads to more harm than good.
For starters, the IT candidate you pick could end up being a bad fit. Maybe they are missing a key piece of technical knowledge or specific experience required to do the job, and this happened to be overlooked because you rushed the process. Or maybe the new hire is simply not passionate about the work they’re doing and quickly becomes bored with their day to day tasks. This could have been discovered early if you had spent more time during the interview phase, and asked the right questions.
When a tech employee is a poor fit for a position, this leads to more mistakes. Whether it is because they don’t know what they are doing, or because they don’t care enough about their work, mistakes are bound to happen. Now you need to spend time not only repairing the mistakes, but training the employee to try and ensure they don’t happen again. Depending on the technical role this new employee is filling, the mistakes could be quite large, and cost your company significantly.
If your new IT employee continues to make mistakes, eventually you will have to let them go. Now you need to go through the hiring process again, in hopes that you can find a better fit. Your company will end up spending more time and resources than if it had just taken its time to begin with.
Suppose your company hadn’t learned from its mistakes, and continues to rush through the hiring process for its next tech hire. The same thing happens in a couple of months, and you are back to looking for a new software developer, QA engineer, or help desk technician. As this trend continues throughout your company, you will gain a reputation for a high turnover rate. Potential IT candidates may be turned off from applying to your business, and now you may not be getting the best possible tech candidates applying for jobs with you. High turnover is also bad for morale, as no one likes to keep adjusting to new people in the office every few weeks or months.
How to avoid rushing through hiring
Now that we’ve seen why you want to avoid a speedy hire, let’s focus on how to do that. The first thing you want to try and do is ignore outside factors. What we mean is, even if your company desperately needs to fill a technical position, you shouldn’t consider this when making a hire. Hiring out of desperation leads to rushing, which is what you don’t want.
Instead, consider making preparations for hiring a new IT employee before you even anticipate a need for them. That way, once the time comes to bring in a new hire, you will have given yourself a head start. For instance, you could collect resumes for every position you have in your company, and keep them on file. You could also have candidates complete online assessments, allowing you to gauge their skills, and simply keep the results stored in your applicant tracking system until you have an opening. Let the technical candidates who are applying know that there are no open positions at the moment, but that you will keep their information on file and reach out to them should one open.
You could also speak with a staffing or recruiting agency that specializes in placing IT and technical candidates before you need to bring someone in. Many companies recognize how much time and money is saved when choosing to outsource the hiring process to outside staffing agencies, but they usually don’t contact them until they realize they have a need to fill a suddenly open or soon-to-be open position. Since a recruiting agency is going to need some time to find you a variety of good candidates, it’s better to talk to them before you have a need. Recruiting firms have information about plenty of candidates, and by letting them know your needs well in advance, they will be better able to send over resumes of only the most qualified IT and tech candidates once a position eventually opens.
However you choose to go about hiring someone, be sure you have a strong system in place. You should have a set schedule for how long each part of the hiring process should take, and then make yourself stick to it when an opening occurs. If you’re unsure how long you should be spending on each task, this study from Glassdoor goes into detail on how long, on average, certain screening processes add to the hiring process. You can use this as a rough estimate to get you started, but you’ll likely have to fine tune your schedule to fit your company’s needs.
Spend the time now – not later
When it comes to hiring, there is a phrase in the business world that you should keep in mind – “hire slow, fire fast”. Following this adage will help you to avoid mistakes during the hiring process, and to cut loose employees that aren’t working out before the problems grow.
You’re going to have to spend time when it comes to hiring for your IT and development departments – it’s just a matter of when you want to spend it and how much you want to spend. If you want your tech hires to be efficient and last a long time at your company, then take the time right from the start. Doing otherwise will only result in poor employee fit, more mistakes, and a higher turnover rate.
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If it’s one thing our clients agree on, it’s how partnering with CERS has simplified the recruitment process for them so that they can focus on more big picture items. If you’re curious about how you can take your IT and technology departments to the next level, start a conversation with one of our recruiters. Don’t forget to ask about our 5-year guarantee!
