{"id":3853,"date":"2013-10-17T08:24:33","date_gmt":"2013-10-17T15:24:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/recruitloop.wpengine.com\/?p=3853"},"modified":"2023-05-09T19:16:47","modified_gmt":"2023-05-10T02:16:47","slug":"the-7-biggest-mistakes-i-made-as-a-hiring-manager","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zippia.com\/employer\/the-7-biggest-mistakes-i-made-as-a-hiring-manager\/","title":{"rendered":"The 7 Biggest Mistakes I Made as a Hiring Manager"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Hiring<\/a>Earlier this week, we posted a list of Paul\u2019s top 10 stuff-ups (in American – screw-ups :)) he made as a recruiter.<\/a> Since turnabout is fair play, I decided to post my own list of massive errors – from the hiring manager end. While there may be fewer, they\u2019re no less cringe-inducing!<\/p>\n

1. Perhaps a better organization system would be in order\u2026?<\/h2>\n

I was working on my first hire, and we were still in the years right after the dot-com bust, when times were tough in IT. I was in the middle of a technology buildout for a startup law firm and posted a help desk role.<\/p>\n

The r\u00e9sum\u00e9s came in by the bucketload. We easily got 300 r\u00e9sum\u00e9s from our low-level help desk role posting. HR printed them out for me (yes, this was over a decade ago), and I trucked them all home to review over the weekend.<\/p>\n

This was my first time screening r\u00e9sum\u00e9s as a hiring manager, so I wanted to make sure that I properly categorized them. I got up early on Saturday and started reading through them, annotating them, and putting them into piles. Eventually, I had somewhere between 14 and 18 piles all over my living room floor.<\/p>\n

All seemed well, until I needed to get to another part of the apartment. I stood up, tripped, and landed in the piles, hopelessly mingling all of them.<\/p>\n

When I went back through them, I only used 3 piles – yes, no, and maybe. Oh, and I didn\u2019t put the piles on the floor!<\/p>\n

2. HR is NOT always right<\/h2>\n

I\u2019ve been fortunate to work with some fantastic folks in HR, but I did learn the hard way that they\u2019re not always right about hiring – especially in IT. This was for the same help desk role for which I created the r\u00e9sum\u00e9 blizzard above.<\/p>\n

I had some really wacky interviews for the role. Two candidates (in the same day) told me that \u201cyour husband must be an angel to deal with you\u201d and \u201cyour husband must be a very strong man.\u201d Finally, a candidate came along who was ok. I didn\u2019t have a great gut feeling about him, but he didn\u2019t insult my spouse!<\/p>\n

HR came by after the interview and said that the last candidate was The One. I didn\u2019t have a good feeling, but, well, this was my very first hire and I figured that trusting HR was a good thing to do – right?<\/p>\n

Wrong.<\/p>\n

Very wrong.<\/p>\n

From telling someone that MS Word didn\u2019t have the capability to do footnotes (which it certainly did even back in 2002!) to hiding invoices from me, to keeping the spit from chewing tobacco in a soda bottle in his office (ew!), the guy was an unmitigated disaster.<\/p>\n

So I got to fire my first hire.<\/p>\n

3. Well, that was awkward\u2026<\/h2>\n

The same day I fired my first hire, I had the most awkward interview moment I\u2019ve had in my career (including when I gesticulated too exuberantly and spilled a glass of water all over a candidate). Mere hours after my first fire, HR managed to bring in someone to interview for the job – someone she thought was a rockstar but didn\u2019t talk to until it was too late in the process before.<\/p>\n

We were sitting in my office, and the candidate said, \u201cHey, what happened to the guy you hired the first time?\u201d<\/p>\n

Not expecting the question, I responded, \u201cOh, I fired him today. Want to see the server room?\u201d<\/p>\n

Shockingly, he took the job, worked for me for the next five years, and we\u2019re still friends today!<\/p>\n

4. Um\u2026 what comes next?<\/h2>\n

I\u2019ve worked in a few companies where candidates come in for an \u201cinterview loop\u201d, where they meet a bunch of people in order. And while I usually carefully reviewed the schedule, once, well, I wasn\u2019t as diligent.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d just finished interviewing a truly fantastic candidate, and I wanted to make a good impression on him. So towards the end of the interview, I started the sell job. You know, the part where you start talking about how great the company is and how fantastic you are as a boss?<\/p>\n

Everything was going so well.<\/p>\n

And then someone came to the conference room. Clearly, it was their reserved time, so we had to vacate. And just as clearly, I had no idea what came next. Was there another interviewer? Was I supposed to walk this guy to the door? To another conference roem?<\/p>\n

I fumbled around a bit, hoping that someone would come by with the next interview slot and rescue me, but no such luck.<\/p>\n

I seated the candidate in the waiting area, ran back to my desk, sllllllowly woke up my computer and scrambled for the interview schedule, and FINALLY figured out what to do. Which was to say goodbye.<\/p>\n

Awkward, much?<\/p>\n

5. What do you mean, I should have told you the salary range?<\/h2>\n

In my time as a hiring manager, I worked with some really fantastic recruiters. Seriously awesome. Sadly, I wasn\u2019t always as awesome a client.<\/p>\n

Once, I emailed a job description to one of my favorite recruiters labeled HIGH IMPORTANCE – RUSH. I demanded anyone who was in the database who fit be sent my way within 24 hours. Apparently, I was pretty desperate to fill this role.<\/p>\n

I then promptly stepped into a 4-hour meeting and turned off my phone and Blackberry.<\/p>\n

I returned to my desk (after business hours, of course) to a slew of URGENT emails and voicemails. It turned out that I had forgotten to tell the recruiter the salary range, thereby making it completely impossible to send me any candidates or even come close to my ridiculous timeframe.<\/p>\n

Oops.<\/p>\n

6. I\u2019m sorry, who are you?<\/h2>\n

If you\u2019ve read any of our resources<\/a>, you may have seen us write, \u201c…or worse, bring the wrong r\u00e9sum\u00e9 into the interview room?\u201d<\/p>\n

Well, I may as well come clean – I\u2019ve done that more than once. Sometimes, I\u2019ve covered it up fairly well, by flipping the paper face-down and saying something like, \u201cI find that r\u00e9sum\u00e9s don\u2019t tell the whole story – why don\u2019t you run me through your background?\u201d<\/p>\n

One time, though, I failed. Repeatedly. I\u2019d brought in the wrong r\u00e9sum\u00e9, and proceeded to call the candidate by the wrong name. For the entire interview. And, of course, I drilled down on some things I found interesting \u2018their\u2019 r\u00e9sum\u00e9, except the r\u00e9sum\u00e9 wasn\u2019t theirs.<\/p>\n

I have no idea why the candidate waited until the end of the interview to correct me, but let\u2019s just say that I was extremely embarrassed. That said, at least the answers I thought were nonsensical made more sense in context, right?<\/p>\n

7. Nothing like a great political snafu…<\/h2>\n

Once, I interviewed a candidate and I had NO idea why she was sitting in front of me. She had no relevant skills, no relevant experience, and no interest in the job, as far as I could tell. I didn\u2019t know why I\u2019d gotten her r\u00e9sum\u00e9 from the recruiter who was doing our screening, and I was a hair’s breadth from firing our recruiter over it.<\/p>\n

I was talking about this candidate to another of her interviewers, who was also disgusted by the situation. As we were complaining, our CEO overheard us and said, \u201cThen we won\u2019t hire her! Always raise the bar! Always always.\u201d<\/p>\n

I went back to my desk and confronted the recruiter about the candidate. \u201cWhy in the world did you waste our time with her?\u201d<\/p>\n

His response? \u201cShe came directly from the CEO, who demanded that we give her a full interview.\u201d<\/p>\n

Um\u2026 sorry?<\/p>\n

So, which are worse? My hiring manager mistakes, or Paul\u2019s recruiter stuff-ups<\/a>? Do you have any interesting hiring manager stories?<\/p>\n

Photo courtesy of Shun Trieu.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Earlier this week, we posted a list of Paul\u2019s top 10 stuff-ups (in American – screw-ups :)) he made as a recruiter. Since turnabout is fair play, Jenn decided to post her own list of massive errors – from the hiring manager end. While there may be fewer, they\u2019re no less cringe-inducing!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":3856,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[22,73],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe 7 Biggest Mistakes I Made as a Hiring Manager<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Here is a list of the massive errors Jenn Steele made - from the hiring manager end. 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