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You’ve been hiring for your company for a while now. You’re confident in your role and feel good about the decisions you make. But you’ve likely also made a few mistakes along the way. Perhaps you hired someone who turned out to be a terrible fit and quit within 30 days. Or maybe you left a job open too long, affecting productivity and the bottom line. Whatever the mistake may have been, rest assured that you aren’t the only one fouling up. In fact, here are some of the biggest mistakes hiring managers make; if you’re looking for things to avoid.

• Failing to Identify What You’re Looking For: More hiring managers than you might think go into hiring with the mentality of, “I’ll know the right fit when I see it.” But this is a mistake on several levels. First of all, having a clearly defined job description (and therefore, a clearly defined idea of what you’re looking for) can save you time in interviews (no need interviewing those who don’t meet your requirements) and provide protection for the company as a whole. That’s right, those job descriptions are considered legal documents, so you want to make sure they are clear (and accurate) in regards to what the job requires. But even beyond that, knowing what you want makes it easier to identify that person when you see them—allowing you to end the interview process much sooner than you otherwise might.
• Asking the Wrong Questions: Hiring managers often have a list of questions they fall back on for every single interview, regardless of what the job entails. These questions include things like, “What would your former supervisors say about you?” and “Are you good at multitasking?” These copy and paste questions won’t actually tell you much of anything about your candidates, because they’ve already rehearsed their answers 100 times before. Whenever possible, try to throw in some questions that are specific and unique to the job you are interviewing for. Ask questions that will give you a clear understanding of the candidates’ familiarity with your software, for instance. Or ask about a unique challenge they faced and overcame in a similar role. Think outside the box with your questions, and do so in a way that requires your candidates to do the same.   
• Hesitating: If the right candidate walks into your office, and the interview is everything you had hoped it would be—why would you ever hesitate on extending an offer? Unfortunately, far too many hiring managers think they buy themselves negotiation points by waiting to call—or that they may be giving themselves a few more days (or weeks) to find someone even better. But the longer you wait, the more likely the perfect candidate you already had in front of you is to accept an offer someplace else. By going into interviews with a strong idea of what you want, and tailoring questions to the job at hand, you will know who is and is not a good fit for the position as they walk out of your office. So prepare yourself to pull the trigger and extend an offer within 24 hours of shaking hands with that perfect fit. Because if you don’t, someone else just might.  

ManUP today for success tomorrow…