It is well established that recruiting staff takes time. To combat this, many employers believe that the best way to save time when recruiting candidates is to do so via word of mouth – hiring someone’s sister, cousin, friend or ex-colleague. Whilst word of mouth referrals can be a great way to find the perfect person, it is often a shortcut which leads to a placement that suits neither the candidate nor the company in the long run and ends up costing you more in training time, loss in productivity and a reduction in team morale.
When hiring staff, the most important factors to consider are the skills required for the role and the overall fit of the candidate into the team. Whilst sometimes a word of mouth candidate may meet all of this, often they are employed as a quick fix but are not an ideal long term solution. Let’s look at the most important aspects you need to consider when hiring a new employee:
1. Does this person possess all of the qualifications, certificates and licenses needed to do the job?
2. Does this person have the relevant and on the job skills and experience to do the role?
3. Will the person fit in with your existing team?
4. Do they suit your company culture?
5. Are they motivated, for the right reasons, towards taking on this role and committing to it long term?
6. Do they have appropriate work ethic, loyalty, honesty and integrity to do the role and work in the company?
If the candidate you are considering through word of mouth meets all of this without hesitation, then great! They probably are the right person for the role. But there is little, if any, way to determine this without having considered the market – are there better candidates for this role, and your organisation, out there in the marketplace?
There is another thing you need to consider when hiring through word of mouth – the dynamics of the team. What happens if the person who referred you this candidate has a falling out with this person one weekend? Whilst the argument may not be relevant to work, it will undoubtedly affect both of them at work. When they bring this tension into the workplace, it not only affects them individually, but also the entire team around them.
So in the end, through no fault of your own or the company, you can end up with disharmony which impacts everyone in the team, no doubt decreasing productivity and negatively impacting company performance. Probably just one more issue you would rather not be dealing with when you could be spending time working on improving your business! Hiring candidates who know everything you need them to, rather than everyone in your team, will undoubtedly yield better results for your business.
