Top 5 Hiring Mistakes 🤦‍♂️

During the course of my career, I’ve been lucky enough to experience a number of mistakes from recruiters that have been useful for me to understand how to handle and avoid replicating when I was hiring myself.

We’ll be going through:

1.Some examples

2.Possible reasons behind the mistakes

3.Ways to tackle them and use them to your advantage

⭐ Some Examples

1. Not listening 🙉

In one particular experience as a candidate, a recruiter asked me a classic question on what my top achievement was in my previous roles. I went to explain that this was a situation where I had to manage conflict between stakeholders in order to then ship a project. The next question he asked me, straight after, was: ‘Can you tell me if you had a situation where you were managing conflict’?

❓Why does this happen?

It’s clear the person wasn’t listening. The truth is I realised a) my previous answer wasn’t impactful / clear enough b) the person may just have been completely disengaged.

✅ What can you do about it?

✍️ Elaborate on your Answer - Simply try to latch on what you said but with more details and a better structure. This could be by giving more color to the story, or even picking a different example.

🆘 Re-set the Conversation - You are probably on a losing ground, so it’s time to retake control by breaking the monotony and automatism you both may be falling into. Depending on the situation, this might mean:

• Ask questions - Questions are the best way to engage people, as they require an active process of information. This could be a clarifying question, or to get a personal perspective on a particular topic you’re discussing

• Acknowledge what’s happening - Another strategy is to say to the recruiter that you’ve realised you’ve made a mistake in how you answered before. She/he will be very appreciative about your consideration and awareness.

2. Ghosting 👻

This is probably one of the most popular recruitment failures out there.

You invest, sometime hours of your time in preparing, talking to lots of different people, doing case studies, and then you never hear back.

This is clearly frustrating, as you just feel completely disrespected and used, plus you have no idea of what went wrong and what you can improve on.

And this is a big mistake for hiring manager and recruiters too: you may end up talking again with that candidate for another role, or in another company.

❓Why does this happen?

Recruiters are busy - they do receive hundreds of applications

You are just a number - increasingly so as applications are now almost always 100% virtual, reducing even further the ‘human’ component.

Goals - their goal is to find the person, ASAP. Nowhere, in most cases, there is a company set goal to treat each candidate as a potential customer or is there a satisfaction score sent out.

Unpredictable things happen - Recruiters leave, the job search is ended, the company closes down, and so on.

✅What can you do about it?

Track status - You should use a tool to track all of your applications and see where you are in the process, and how much time has passed since you have had news.

Be proactive - Contact the recruiter, asking for information on the status of the search. If you don’t get a response, and have been in touch with the hiring managers, you should try and contact them instead. Of course, they can, and likely could not respond. You should also ask, at the beginning, what the expected process is and explicitly about wanting to get some feedback.

3. Lack of Experience 🙊

Once, I was asked from a headhunter about the biggest impact I had in my work experience. I mentioned reducing Customer Acquisition Cost by 15%. He said: ‘all that trouble just for 15%?’

Given that we were spending 25M$/year, the math made that a saving of almost 4M$.

Another great one was when I was interviewing, and at the end of the conversation the HR looks at the screen, face goes blank and starts shouting:

‘Oh no! Matteo! I’m sorry…but I just got an email from my boss saying that the role has been put on hold’.

He mentioned that he would let me know after the call if it was confirmed. He never did and I’m glad for that.

❓Why does this happen?

Recruiters are most often generalists - There’s a lot of talented headhunters/recruiters out there. But it’s likely they may not have specific work experience in the field they’re interviewing for, so it can be quite hard for them to connect on a deeper level to candidates or ask better questions.

✅ What can you do about it?

Try out the ‘Mom test’ principle - Think you’re explaining this to your mom, i.e. recognise that they come from a different background than you, and simplify your answers/anticipate questions they may have. You can really try to rehearse this before with someone. (and by the way - if you haven’t read the ‘Mom test’ book - you should)

5. Rejection Letters ✉️

Ah, rejections. So hard to handle, yet so poorly communicated.

If you’re lucky to get one, you obviously get a canned response, which usually mentions having moved forward with another candidate.

No specific feedback is given.

❓Why does this happen?

That’s how the process works - Similar to the ghosting problem, this happens because it just would take too much time and effort for recruiters to get back to everyone. I don’t think this is fair, given that companies get your data and benchmark you against others - so obtain value from each and every application. It is increasingly unfair when this happens at later stages of the process, when you’ve both invested so much time.

✅ What can you do about it?

Don’t take it too hard - It’s a super competitive market. We are much more ‘commoditised’ than in the past, so it may end up being so small differences or irrational reasons for why you’re being rejected, so don’t sweat it too much. As with all things in life, once you’ve a) known you’ve done all you could to optimize for the best outcome b) learned something in the process, you can see it as a valuable experience that will get you closer to a ‘yes’ next time around.

Respond to the letter - Most of the time, the rejections come from a ‘do-not-respond’ address. If you know who the recruiter or hiring manager was, you can connect them on Linkedin or write them an email. If you don’t, you can find out - it’s so easy these days. Acknowledge the decision, and ask politely for some feedback. You can also share any feedback you may have had on the process.

There have been several occasions where this technique helped me get back into the process (you’re showing a resilient and constructive attitude) or get recruiters to mentally note and think about me for other roles.

Remember, you’re building relationships and this could last into the future.

It’s a small world, and funny things happen all the time.

Do you have any recruiting failures you’d like to share? I’d love to know and mention them in a new article - drop me a DM on twitter @matteocellini

Ciao! 👋 I’m Matteo, thanks for reading!

I’m on a journey to take learnings from my 13+ year experience in career management, hiring and digital marketing. I publish them as advice for those just starting or following a similar path.

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