5 Big IT Hiring Mistakes Employers Make and How to Avoid Them

Since today’s businesses rely heavily on IT, even if they are not tech companies, it only makes sense to pay more attention when it comes to hiring IT professionals. Here are the five big mistakes companies often make when hiring IT professionals. Avoid these topics if you can. If your company has made them, find a way to reverse them.

Vague or Inaccurate Job Description

When you post vague and inaccurate job descriptions, you have to welcome candidates who don’t really “fit” the post and position you are about to allocate to them. Not only this, but you confuse the most suitable and qualified candidates with such vague job descriptions. The result is that the most fitting candidates never enter your door.

Solution: Keep your job descriptions clear. State the requirements for the candidates and responsibilities of the job in bulleted format. Explain every little detail about the job that matters to candidates, i.e., requires traveling, rotation shifts, etc.

Skipping Steps in Hiring

Yes, it is quite futile to keep on interviewing people without finalizing anyone. But this should not make you hurry up so much that yo

u start skipping the steps of hiring. Just because it takes too much time does not mean you should stop checking backgrounds of your candidates.

Solution: The best solution to this is to start the hiring process in time. Secondly, call only the candidates that best fit the job you have posted. Keep interviews short and to the point. Avoid unnecessary questions to probe into things that don’t matter.

Believing Everything the Candidate Says

This mistake is one that companies often make due to haste. Another reason for not inspecting and verifying the information provided by the candidate is non-professionalism. Once you ignore one lie from the candidate, they are ready to lie throughout the interview.

Solution: Make rules and follow them. If they have references on the CV, call them and confirm them. Call the previous employer to know why a particular candidate left the job from there. Always ask the “how” questions to know that they can back up their claims, e.g., if a candidate says he can handle the pressure ask him “how do you know?”

Not Thinking about Culture

You need to consider the culture from which an employee comes. If they are not happy in your office environment, they won’t perform well. Certain things could be distracting for them making it difficult for them to become a full part of the workplace.

Solution: When you check their background, get an idea of their culture. Ask them specific and straightforward questions about cultural assimilation. If they seem reluctant to accept certain ideas that are a part of your/office culture, it’s better to hire some other candidate.

Not Getting Help

If there is an option available for help, go for it. Taking the burden of the entire hiring process and still ending up with unfitting candidates and untrained employees is an indication of a flaw in your hiring process.

Solution: There are now IT hiring companies that can help you through the entire process of hiring IT professionals. They understand the process and the IT industry, and they also know what specific questions to ask from IT candidates. Once you have the right people doing the right jobs, your business can flourish at a great pace.

Decide Consulting is a software and IT Staffing firm based in Houston, TX. Founded by veteran software consultants, Decide has developed proprietary methods for finding problem-solving IT personnel. Our Software products focus on the Environmental Health & Safety (EHS) and Healthcare markets.