Hiring Wisdom: Why Don’t Most Hiring Managers Do the Obvious?

I wonder why most hiring managers and HR folks don’t do what is obvious? For example:

Hire tough so they get to manage easy.
To have a happy work place, why don’t they hire happy people?
Why don’t they go looking for the type of employees they want to hire instead of hoping they will walk in the door? (They usually don’t. They are too busy working someplace else.)
If they know they can get more by paying more, why not pay more and expect more?
Since one of the key motivators is recognition and, in most cases it doesn’t even cost money, why don’t they give more recognition?
If you only get one chance to make a first impression, why don’t they make the first day on the job the best day any new employee will ever have?
Since it pays to learn to fail fast, why do they hold on to employees who aren’t pulling their weight?

This was originally published on Mel Kleiman’s Humetrics blog.

Mel Kleiman, CSP, is an internationally-known authority on recruiting, selecting, and hiring hourly employees. He has been the president of Humetrics since 1976 and has over 30 years of practical experience, research, consulting and professional speaking work to his credit. Contact him at mkleiman@humetrics.com.

Ron

Aside from the legal selection guidelines, I was once told by the CHRO of Disney that they used employees to hire other employees. When I asked why – he said that they knew that people tend to hire people like themselves. So, if you want happy, smiling employees (Disney’s model) this is how you do it. Makes sense, but within certain guidelines.
http://twitter.com/sparkhire Spark Hire

These are really great bits of hiring wisdom. Especially the one about hiring happy workers in order to establish a happy company culture. If you hire candidates who are truly motivated and passionate about the work and the industry, you’ll have more dedicated and hardworking employees. A great way to find truly motivated candidates faster is to utilize online video in your hiring process. By viewing video resumes and one-way video interviews before more traditional face-to-face conversations you’ll save yourself time weeding out the candidates who aren’t truly passionate about the position.
mysticnox

I can answer the second one… because they are usually the ones causing employees to be unhappy. Most people start a job being relieved and happy to have it. They will appear happy, at first. Until the management makes them miserable.