The Cost of Hiring Mistakes
It is becoming more and more expensive for managers to make mistakes by hiring the wrong people. A company can be set back by as much as six months as they re-do the advertising and screening process. Most managers have had the experience of hiring persons who had excellent resumes, presented themselves very well in the interview, had neat appearances and seemed to have the qualifications to meet the necessary job requirements only to find out later that these seemingly qualified candidates turned out to be the wrong person for the job.  Today, the chances of making a bad hiring decision are greater than ever as applicants have become more skilled at presenting themselves in resumes which really are self reports. Interviews are performances at which some people are very good.  Identifying potentially counterproductive employees before you hire them is one of the greatest challenges to a manager these days. The problem of hiring counterproductive employees has reached epidemic proportions.

Resume Falsification
We have reviewed thousands of resumes at The JobBank over the past 10 years and we estimate that more than 20 percent contain information that is falsified or exaggerated to some extent. These include qualifications, work experiences and achievements that applicants claim to have but don’t. We are also well aware of those that have omitted critical job-related issues.  Some “professionals” are offended when we ask that they bring the originals of their certificates and degrees to the interview. They tell us that no-one has ever asked them to do that before. Our response is very simple, “that’s why we are asking”.

Employee Theft
Many people do not understand that the check at the exit of places like Price Mart, Mega Mart and H&L True Value is mainly to catch staff-customer collusion. In the USA, losses due to employee thefts are greater than $40 billion a year and are increasing by 15% per year.  In retail establishments, employee theft is estimated at 43 percent of shrinkage losses, compared to 30% attributed to shoplifting. Overall, employee theft can increase the cost of retail merchandise by as much as 15%. In financial institutions, losses have nearly doubled in recent years.  Losses due to internal fraud have been about four times that of burglary and robbery.  Many Jamaican companies are quietly suffering because they fear the bad publicity. In the USA, the FBI estimates that internal theft accounts for 86% of all losses every year.

Pre-employment Screening Methods
Most companies use several selection methods when assessing job applicants because no single applicant screening procedure alone can determine employability. Choices must be made based on whether or not these particular selection procedures are cost-effective in terms of time, money and other resources needed to perform them and the quality of the employees to be hired using them.

Interviews
Interviewing is probably the most common pre-employment screening technique. A structured interview can verify information on applications and resumes. It also can provide valuable insight into an applicant's personality, skills and abilities. But interviewing may not be as effective as employers would like because it is often a subjective, non-directed process. Also, it can be difficult to determine truthfulness when discussing work history and the level of skills and abilities. Unfortunately, most interviewers are not trained in interviewing techniques and may not have the ability to elicit the types of information the employer needs.

Reference Checks
Reference checks are useful for verifying information on an application form or a resume and for providing background information on an applicant's work history. Unfortunately, reference checks do not always yield reliable information because many employers are reluctant to say anything negative about a past employee. Additionally, misconduct, even if it did occur, may have gone undetected. An additional difficulty is that a prospective employer has no real way of knowing if the designated references are themselves reliable or if they are the most important ones to check.

Next week we will look at Criminal History Checks, Polygraph Exams, Handwriting Analysis and Psychological Inventories and provide a comparative assessment as to their effectiveness in hiring the right person.

Dr. Semaj is a frequent facilitator for Strategic Planning Retreats, Cultural Alignment and Organizational Restructuring. He conducts Staff Selection and Development Programmes for many sectors (Hospitality, Finance, Gaming, Telecommunications, Security, Agriculture, Shipping, Distribution, Manufacturing and Government) across the Caribbean. Dr. Semaj helps companies and individuals prepare for the New Work Order by monitoring international trends in the world of work.

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