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10 Most Common Recruitment Mistakes



The hiring process is one of the most arduous and tedious tasks, and possibly one of the most difficult processes. Making the right hiring decision is to find people whose values align with your company’s principles and objectives. If any business survives and thrives by the people they hire, though, hiring strategy is of paramount importance.

Be prepared for your potential candidates
“Hire right, because the penalties of hiring wrong are huge.”
Ray Dalio

If candidates were told to prepare before an interview, so should recruiters. Job ads on sites are generally lack of transparency. Simply put, the responsible duties that potential employees will be assigned to are commonly structured with unclear hiring policy. Recruiters often had their arrows missed the target because they did not get the duties right to give them enough power to get the hire right. A right job description starts by outlining the job, not the worker. Managers should discuss and review the job description to make sure it is current before hanging the ad up for vacancy. Getting the perfect fit might ultimately help you to recruit the right candidate, perhaps, a long-term valued company asset.

Be responsible for who you hired
“Acquiring the right talent is the most important key to growth. Hiring was - and still is - the most important thing we do. ”
Marc Bennioff

When a job description is up-to-date, recruiters will have a clearer picture of what (not who) to hire, since an overly-wide candidate pool can often divert attention during the hiring process. Moving on from the previous step, narrow down the requirements and characteristics that need to be successful in the slot. A tip to be better at what you’re doing:  Prep a personal ‘Interview Preparation Checklist’, ask yourselves sharp questions (E.g. Is the team truly need new blood to fill the spot? Is meticulous attention to details required? Is researching and writing skills important?) to be certain you are hiring who you are looking for.

Don’t rush the hiring process
“ I'd rather interview 50 people and not hire anyone than hire the wrong person. ”
Jeff Bezos

‘Good enough’ is not what an employer should settle for, especially when hiring at emergency. Most companies wait to hire until it becomes an emergency, for the most part, decisions are made pretty quickly after the first week of interviewing. For the record, candidates seen the first week do not represent all the candidates out there. Vital enough for recruiters to consider the broad applicant pool in searching for the long term fit and best candidates for the company. Rather than falling into another pitfall, it is better that the recruiters spend more time to broaden their candidates' options in order to optimize company productivity in the long run. 

Ask for enough references
“ Hiring people is an art, not a science, and resumes can’t tell you whether someone will fit into a company’s culture. ”
Howard Schultz

A resume is an advertisement that serves to promote the good side of a candidate. They made it look great on the paper. But, how true it is? It is the HR dogma to ‘trust and verify’ if all candidates speak of the truth or they were merely inflating their accomplishment to get an extra boost on their application in order to stay on top of the long applicants' list. It is the recruiters’ responsibility to find out the credibility behind those stories speak out of a candidate’s mouth to avoid making major hiring mistakes. No companies want to hire a person who they cannot give in trust and to entrust them with important tasks and matters. Checking references might come in handy for you to make the best choice possible. 

Be rationalized and Less subjective
“ Never look down on people unless you’re helping them up. ”
Jesse Jackson

Most would probably agree that the first impression is a big step toward successful recruitment. For this reason, these days, candidates would go the extra mile to prepare their attire and physical appearances. Despite some recruiters do not wish to be accounted for this assertion, affirming that qualifications are the principal quality they are looking for, it is inevitable that humans natural born “gut feelings” would raise a judgment the first time you meet a stranger. Speaking of which, ‘Never judge a book by its cover’.  A firm handshake or good eye contact does not reflect a person’s competency level. Recruiters should look the inside rather than the outside of a candidate to make sure you get the insight information of who he is, such as experiences, skills,  capabilities, etc. Scorecard all interviewees and keep your eyes on the main goal you need to achieve. Hire people who add value to your company will save you an extra payout.

Let them do the talks
“ Hiring the right people takes time, the right questions and a healthy dose of curiosity. What do you think is the most important factor when building your team? For us, it's personality. ”
Richard Branson

How frequent an interviewer stops talking during an interview, almost none. Research indicates that 80 percent of the time while an interview is conducted, interviewers are constantly picking up the ball rather than throwing the ball at the candidates. An important task that recruiters often fail to accomplish is to learn the “brain and heart” of their potential candidates. Brain demonstrates wisdom and judgment while Heart reflects moral ethics and beliefs. This is why an interviewer should seize this chance to maximize the interview, and get to discover candidates’ ability to confront unexpected challenges and their likelihood of developing into a valuable team member.

Asking Yes/No questions were thought to be the doing of the hiring process, the answer is No. Recruiters are encouraged to ask open-ended questions that prompt insight and thoughtful response from them, gives them the opportunity to reveal themselves. This is the moment where you get to scavenge their background, talent, and potentiality. So don’t waste it!

Too much of a good thing
“ Acquiring the right talent is the most important key to growth… Hiring was- and still is- the most important thing we do. ”
Marc Bennioff

This may be uncommon to come across in smaller companies, generally speaking, this runs through the blood of big companies or corporates. Candidates may be familiar with big companies with standardized hiring processes do usually have a panel of people from irrelevant department on a first interview. Likewise, you do not need several interviewers for a single opening or to have untrained staff asking inappropriate questions that lower the standard of your company. Even though this may sound like a higher-level sort of interview, this can become a waste of resources if those involved in the process are not exactly needed. On the other hand, this can intimidate candidates and send the message that you rule by a strict hierarchy of control. Another question is, how well it is to maintain every candidate gets an equal share amount of attention, all while not wasting everyone’s time? Keep the process simple and go for efficient results. 

Refuse technology 
“Purchasing high-quality devices and technology in the workplace should be seen as an investment, not a waste of money. ”
Andrew Hunter

Prior to joining, candidates would want to feel that they are in a competitive business rather than falling into a dead-end in the abyss. Businesses need to keep up with tech advances for them to recruit and retain talent. Bringing in technological enhancement gives extra skillset to your employees, it will undoubtedly profit your business in return. Organization stagnant and less innovative business most probably wouldn’t please a leader. To achieve this, recruiters should seek wiser and convenient methods indispensably to conduct productive recruitment process.

Fail to tackle social media platforms
“Don’t build links. Build relationships.”
Rand Fishkin

Candidates never walk in your company with their resumes or sending in their application without going through basic background checks on your company. Who doesn’t want to get employed by a notable company, get a better monthly paycheck and strengthen their skills in a growing company? These all rely heavily on the images you built through channels of communication, for example, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube. The most painful truth most recruiters have failed to notice is, social media posts not only have the enormous potency to reach out to their customers, they are also reaching out to new talents in the market who are seeking for potential jobs in the platforms as such. Positive culture and professional development mirror through these platforms can create strong constructive impressions and increase engagement between company, customers and potentially, prospective employees. Weak social media presence can really hurt your company - remember, that includes the people in it.

Ignore company culture and values
“If you hire good people, give them good jobs and pay them good wages, generally, something good is going to happen. ”
James Sinegal

People who you hired are going to live out the vision for your company. You sure do want people who (once or presently) step over your company’s threshold to describe their working experiences or to talk about your company's fame and fortune in the best light possible. Interviewers can be overly-obsessed with talking about the mission when they are set to hit the bullseye and forget to showcase the company’s style and culture. Showing that you care about candidates’ merits (honour their skills), concerns (fitting into the role and team) and what they deserve (benefits, perks, salary, and flexibility), can be a big differentiator for candidates. Looking at the bigger picture, employees are the greatest representation of a company. Therefore, hiring ideal candidates and make them another happy employee in the business not only helps to uphold your stand in the marketplace but an extra shield to potential liability in the future. 

“A business of integrity starts with who you hire.”
Hiring start with TimeTec Hire



Overcoming Hiring Challenges Towards 2020



Hiring is costly. The vacant position is costing your company money and the hiring process even so if the process is lengthy, and require substantial resources. Every company wants to cherrypick the available candidates out there, but without having the right candidates or the proper process, bad hires can cost your company even more money than it should. Out of desperation, companies often settle with the best of what they have at the moment, without finding remedies to the challenges that they are facing when it comes to hiring. Perhaps, companies need to find a way to overcome the hiring challenges they face as they march towards 2020.

How to appeal to the right candidates?
When a job post created, applications start pouring. The problem is, the majority of the applicants are not the ones you are looking for. So, what's the solution? It's crucial that the hiring team knows the criteria required for a position, and therefore, ask the right questions to sift through a pool of candidates. For example, if the role requires English proficiency, it's wise NOT to ask do you have English proficiency, because a majority who are desperate for a job would answer yes and hoping to go to the next stage of the hiring process. From my own experience, candidates who put 8/10 English proficiency could barely communicate in English well, let alone write a decent piece. Therefore, instead of asking for honesty, you should build a question that would make you come to the correct conclusion, like, how many grammatical errors can you spot in this paragraph? Or if the position is technical, let the candidate answer technical-related questions earlier on, so you won't be wasting time entertaining the non-qualified ones in the next stage.

How to employ good candidates?
Good candidates always know their worth. Hence, they rarely act out of desperation, they are good at pacing themselves, and at the same time, they keep their options open, considering a few offers that come their way carefully. Therefore, attracting good candidates require effective persuasion from employers who have to figure out what makes these candidates tick. Perhaps it's the money, perhaps it's leadership, perhaps it's the culture. Be prepared to influence these candidates with what they want rather than what the company needs.

How to hire fast effectively? 
Every day that a crucial position vacates, the company is losing money due to delayed operation or interrupted workflow. When a post is required, it has to fill up fast. There are two types of hire: Common roles, Crucial roles. For the common roles such as retail assistants, f&b workers, skip the complicated and long hiring process because it's utterly unnecessary, time-consuming, and not to mention, costly. The hiring process needs to be straightforward and pinpoint the questions to get decent candidates to fill up the post. Nevertheless, Crucial roles like the Chiefs would require a thorough hiring process and a sufficient timeline to reduce the risk. A rush decision on a Crucial role can have a devastating impact on the company as a whole.

How to create an efficient hiring process? 
Sifting through a pile of resumes can be daunting, ineffective, and possible bias, mainly when a group of people who measures it based it on their own standards and interpretation. The outcome of the resume selection process determines the candidates that the hiring team is going to meet during the interview sessions. To ensure that the interview candidates are a group of qualified applicants, the company has to improve the resume-sifting process and make it automated. The hiring team needs to input the metrics they want for a position and when the resume comes in, all the details filtered to present the best matching candidates with the qualifications in the shortest amount of time possible.

How to eliminate bias?
Even when the resume selection has been processed automatically, the overall hiring process could still be prone to bias during other hire stages. Therefore, a standardized scorecard is an excellent tool for interviewers to fill up for transparency. Additionally, the company could impose questionnaires and tests to gauge a candidate's level of knowledge and expertise in a subject or a position.

We are in 2019. It's about time that companies are taking charge of their hiring process and choose a system that can help streamline the process, offer better team collaboration, and keep all candidates information centralized.

TimeTec Hire by TimeTec Cloud offers a cloud-based recruitment solution that possesses all these fantastic features and more:

ATS - Applicant Tracking System
Job Post Templates - To help you get started with your job posts
Questionnaires Tool - Design suitable questionnaires to land you desirable candidates
Interview Scheduling Tool - To schedule interviews and keep everyone involved informed and prepared
Interview Scorecards - A standardized feedback form for all interviewers
Job Offer - To streamline job offer processes
Onboarding Process - To assimilate the new hire into your organization conveniently

Contact us for a demo, or you can go to www.timetechire.com and sign-up for a 14-day FREE TimeTec Hire trial account with 10 job posts, unlimited users.


HR-ing in the Digital Era



AI, Big Data, cloud services, Internet of Thing - these are the latest buzzwords we’ve heard so much about lately. All these technology enhancements change the way organizations operate; where most systems are offered online, made transparent and accessible at any time, anywhere. But why and how does this digital transformation affected human resource or HR?

Organizations that are ready to adopt this digital transformation need to brace for various changes in their systems either abruptly or progressively including their daily work processes, recruiting flow, on boarding process and workforce management, and when the workforce is concerned, HR is in charge. Therefore, HR professionals have to play a role in ensuring that the changes made would not interrupt the business operation.

Here we provide 3 important aspects that every HR professional should consider when selecting new systems:

Automation in Recruitment
While old school HR sifts through resumes to find the right ones to interview, modern HR should be using advanced technologies to automate the recruiting process. Why? Because they can and the tool is available for use. One perfect example of a recruitment cloud solution that offers Applicant Tracking System is TimeTec Hire, where resume screening process is done automatically based on the settings provided by the HR/recruiting team. Say a company is looking for a copywriter with at least 2 years writing experience having a degree in English and great personality. By using TimeTec Hire, an admin or a recruitment personnel can set these requirements as mandatory e.g. 2 years writing experience, a degree in English, and etc, and when resumes started coming in, these requirements will be compared against the resumes and the system will shortlist a few candidates to go through the next process such as a quiz with a string of relevant questionnaires. Successful candidates of the quiz will then proceed to the interview session, where interviewers will have to fill up the interview score card set in the system for the system to average out the result.

There are plenty of benefits for company to use TimeTec Hire. The obvious ones are time saving, reduce demand on valuable resources, and everybody involved in the process will be kept on their toes on progress and update of recruitment process. Apart from that, automation of recruitment using the likes of TimeTec Hire will eliminate bias that is quite apparent in many organizations because naturally, most people want to do a favor to other people, hence, ‘cheating’ in the recruiting process by selecting candidates dear to the recruiter. TimeTec Hire as well simplifies the onboarding process because when the data are available, the data can be transferred into the HR system such as TimeTec Profile to be further completed with other necessary information. Having your own recruitment solution gives the control back to you, and provide you with comfort knowing that no prospective candidates escape your attention. And one other thing, after all is done, the data are kept organized, secured and easily accessible even after a few months, and this alone is a relief to many HR personnel who are in charge of filing and documentations.




Workforce Analysis Capability
Besides recruitment solution, today’s companies also need other workforce solutions to streamline processes and it is imperative that the 21st century solutions provide more than automation to the HR. Good solutions must not only be of convenience to the admin and users at large, they also must be able to provide analysis on the organization’s workforce, such as work performance analysis, predict employee flight risk, overview of employees Key Performance Indicator (KPI), discipline indicators and etc. The advantages of a cloud-based system is data accessibility. However, data are just numbers and information, and without analysis or interpretation, nothing much can be derived from any solutions. At the one hand, HR can draw their own conclusions from their observations. However, the accuracy of those conclusions could be questionable. On the other hand, by having a system such as TimeTec TA, the cloud-based time and attendance solution that collects attendance/clocking data based on the schedule/roster set by the admin at their disposal. HR can analyze employees’ work rates percentages, identify problematic areas, plan for remedial actions to improve the workforce’s discipline and eventually, productivity, all using reliable and accurate data collected from their employees overtime. In short by HR tapping on an awesome workforce tool like TimeTec TA, they have access to analysis charts to provide an overview of the whole organization down to the selected individuals.



Mobile Technology is Not Optional Anymore
Another technology that HR needs to pay attention to is mobile technology. Smartphone usage is  no longer about calling someone dan texting them. It has evolved to include more useful functions such as e-wallet, banking activities, health and fitness, smart community, music and more. Some useful features that smartphones offer are real time, GPS whereabouts, photos, instant notification and instant updates. Therefore, developers are exploiting those features to offer cool Apps for work and leisure alike. One such App that puts the cool smartphone features to use is TimeTec Leave, the cloud-based leave management system by TimeTec. The App lets employees apply their leave via smartphone and at the same time, the boss or superior will receive the application instantly for review and approval. The employees can also view their leave information such as leave allowances, leave types, leave balances, leave calendar, leave policy and much more from the App. The employer on the hand can derive the leave data for analysis and find areas for improvement to increase employee’s engagement. The mobile technology is part of the digital revolution, and not only a solution like TimeTec Leave is using it, TimeTec TA offers various clocking methods via the App for convenience amongst other useful features offered to consumers. Therefore, HR needs to open up to smartphone Application usage to create better working process and better results for the company. 


As a conclusion, in moving forward HR has to embrace comprehensive and transparent systems that not only able to analyze but also evaluate data and information, while at the same time offering platforms that are inclusive all employees’ views and feedback. The digital era closes the gap between HR and employees more than ever by presenting various options and channels of communication to utilize. The only thing HR professionals need to do is to imagine new ways of delivering HR services to its organization and deploy the technologies available to their advantage.

TimeTec Hire Beta version will be available in July, so head on to www.timetechire.com to try!