9 Keys for Avoiding a Bad Hire

We’ve pretty much all been there. Your new hire is struggling. You’ve done all the right training and onboarding, followed up with coaching and constructive feedback, but the work isn’t good, and the rest of your team knows it. Not only is your new hire getting dirty looks from coworkers, but a few of those are now aimed at you. But you don’t want to admit your mistake, and you definitely don’t want to go through the hiring process again. They’re going to catch on eventually. Right?

Probably not.

Made a Bad Hire? Act fast.

Bad hires, no matter the position or level, can negatively affect your team’s productivity in so many ways:

  • Poor work quality
  • Missing project deadlines
  • Poor work attendance
  • Don’t work well with others
  • Abilities don’t match what they represented during hiring  process
  • Negative attitude
  • Unprofessional behavior including bullying or harassment
  • Criminal or unethical activity including theft or fraud

A bad hire can do a lot of damage (keep reading to see how much). The sooner you act, the better—for you and your entire organization. Start documenting the situation, having difficult conversations about performance, and laying the groundwork for termination.

How Big is the Problem?

Really big. A Career Builder survey reported that 74% of companies have made a bad hire.  And that’s probably low. Anyone who’s ever worked anywhere can tell you a story about a disastrous hire in their organization. Even the most successful companies aren’t immune: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh has said that bad hires have cost his company, “well over $100 million.”

Which brings us to…

Bad hires are expensive. Here’s why.

In a Career Builder survey, employers reported losing an average of $14,900 for each bad hire. The U.S Department of Labor estimated that a bad hire can cost up to 30% of that employee’s first-year salary. Other estimates say that figure is more like 50%. And some have gone as high as $240,000 for higher-level roles.

Where’s all that money going?

Measurable costs. These are the hard dollars you can easily see: recruitment and advertising fees for job posting, relocation fees, and training fees. Staff time, including the hours put in by HR and hiring managers. There could be costs for a severance package or outplacement services. And in the worst cases, there might be legal expenses.

Hidden costs. These are hard to measure, but they’re much more serious. A bad hire can infect morale, hinder team performance, and harm workplace culture. It can derail important projects, alienate key customers, weaken your company’s brand image, and cause you to miss out on big opportunities. There are also emotional costs like stress, resentment, and burnout.

And then you add in the cost of replacing a bad hire—now you’re talking serious money.

Why so many bad hires?

Employers spend more time than ever in hiring (research from Glassdoor shows that the time employers spend on interviews has almost doubled since 2009), but bad hires are as common as ever—maybe even more common. Why? Low unemployment has made it a job-seeker’s market, so employers often feel rushed to land a candidate. Another reason, as The Harvard Business Review points out, is that workers change jobs much more often than in previous generations (therefore internal promotions aren’t as common) and companies today are constantly having to hire outside talent; they’re in scramble mode.

And an unexpected result: they’re not as good at hiring for entry-level jobs.

How to Avoid Making a Bad Hire

This is a tough situation, but you can improve your odds. Here’s how

  • Hire for the person and their potential, not the resume. Too often, employers hire according to a checklist of technical skills rather than looking at core values and so-called soft skills—things like integrity, professionalism, collaboration, and communication. These things are often essential, you can always train for the rest.
  • Build a standardized hiring process. If you don’t have one, you’re five times more likely to make a bad hire, according to a study by Brandon Hall Group and Glassdoor. A good process includes powerful tools for both HR and hiring managers—including standard interview questions, peer-to-peer evaluations, and more.
  • Design a welcoming and robust onboarding program. If you have a consistent showing-the-ropes program, you can improve retention by 82%, according to the same research cited above.
  • Do a thorough background check. This service isn’t free, but it’ll save you money and heartache in the long run.
  • Get an objective perspective. Involve third parties in the hiring process—this could be a full service partner that screens and matches candidates for you (hey, Avenica does that!). Or even another employee from an unrelated department. You need somebody who can give you unbiased feedback.
  • Be clear and honest about your company and culture. Many times, it’s not that the employee is a poor worker, just that they’re not the right fit for the role or your company.
  • Let your candidates see what the job is like. Again, sometimes a bad hire is just a mismatch. Give candidates an unvarnished view of what the role is like. Some companies (Google, Marriot) have turned to gamification, letting candidates play a game that simulates the skills and challenges involved in the job.
  • Trust in your recruiting professionals. Not everyone is great at interviewing and identifying potential, especially in entry-level candidates. This is the time to let your HR professionals and partners do their jobs.
  • Measure your hiring success. No company would spend millions on an ad campaign without measuring how effective it was. But according to the Harvard Business Review, only about a third of U.S. companies monitor whether their hiring practices lead to good employees.

Hiring will never be a perfect process. But there are two key things to remember. You don’t have to be stuck with a bad hire—act quickly and you can minimize the damage. Secondly, there are clear steps you can take to avoid future disasters.

About Avenica

Through conversation, high-impact coaching, and best-in-class support, we translate and meet the needs of our client partners by identifying and transforming potential into high-performing professionals. At Avenica, we are working from the inside out to embrace diverse thought and perspectives while actively working to dismantle systems of oppression and implicit bias. With a deeply-held belief in human potential, we transform lives and enable organizations to achieve new heights.

If you’re interested in partnering with us to develop or hire your workforce, let’s talk. If you’re a job seeker, please apply now!

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Scott Dettman joined Jeff Wagner of WCCO | CBS to discuss TheDream.US partnership

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Scott Dettman joined Jeff Wagner of WCCO | CBS to discuss TheDream.US partnership

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Biography

Avenica CEO Scott Dettman joined Jeff Wagner of WCCO | CBS to discuss the newly-announced partnership with TheDream.US and the goal to help prepare DREAMers for careers after college through one-on-one coaching and mentorship, high-impact training and upskilling, and personalized career planning designed to support DREAMers connect to meaningful, right-fit career paths.

Watch the full interview HERE.

About Avenica

Through conversation, high-impact coaching, and best-in-class support, we translate and meet the needs of our client partners by identifying and transforming potential into high-performing professionals. At Avenica, we are working from the inside out to embrace diverse thought and perspectives while actively working to dismantle systems of oppression and implicit bias. With a deeply-held belief in human potential, we transform lives and enable organizations to achieve new heights.

If you’re interested in partnering with us to develop or hire your workforce, let’s talk. If you’re a job seeker, please apply now!

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Avenica and TheDream.US Announce Strategic Partnership

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Avenica and TheDream.US Announce Strategic Partnership

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Avenica and TheDream.US announce strategic partnership to create career pathways for DREAMers through career readiness coaching, upskilling, and connections to career opportunities.

Avenica, a national leader in workforce solutions focused on bridging the gap between education and work, and TheDream.US, the nation’s largest college access and success program for DREAMers, are proud to announce their strategic partnership to create career pathways for DREAMers through career readiness coaching, upskilling, and connections to career opportunities.

TheDream.US, whose supporters range from The Graham Family, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundations, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Ford Foundation, The Coca-Cola Foundation, The PepsiCo Foundation, among many others, was founded by Graham Holdings Company CEO Donald E. Graham, his wife, journalist Amanda Bennett, Democratic activist and philanthropist Henry R. Muñoz III, and former U.S. Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez. TheDream.US is the first multimillion-dollar National Scholarship Fund created to help immigrant students who came to this country as children achieve the American Dream. Scholarships from TheDream.US fund the completion of a college education.

We are announcing this partnership on the heels of the recent Supreme Court ruling upholding the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that protects hundreds of thousands of immigrants who arrived to the US as children from deportation and enables them to legally work. The goal of this partnership is to help TheDream.US Scholars connect to meaningful careers and contribute to the economic prosperity of our country.

“As U.S. businesses begin to rebuild their workforces post the pandemic, they are seeking diverse and often overlooked talent. DREAMers have the qualities employers seek — they’re entrepreneurial, determined to succeed, often bilingual, and eager to contribute to strengthening our companies and enriching our communities. All DREAMers need is the opportunity – and our partnership with Avenica will provide this,” says Candy Marshall, President of TheDream.US.

This partnership will provide TheDream.US’ college seniors and recent graduates access to a robust offering through the Avenica’s Pathways program which will include individualized career prep, high-impact training opportunities, and career discovery assessment designed to identify right-fit career paths.

“We’re not only proud to stand in support of DACA and the hundreds of thousands of people it protects, we’re proud to partner with TheDream.US to provide career resources and support to this overlooked and growing talent pool of college educated DREAMers who are eager to contribute to a country that is their home,” responded Scott Dettman, CEO, Avenica.

About TheDream.US

TheDream.US is the nation’s largest college access and success program for immigrant youth, having provided more than 5,000 college scholarships to DREAMers at more than 70 partner colleges in 16 states and Washington, DC. We believe that all young Americans, regardless of where they were born, should have the opportunity to get a college education and pursue a meaningful career that contributes to our country’s prosperity. Read TheDream.US response to the recent Supreme Court ruling on DACA here.

About Avenica

Through conversation, high-impact coaching, and best-in-class support, we translate and meet the needs of our client partners by identifying and transforming potential into high-performing professionals. At Avenica, we are working from the inside out to embrace diverse thought and perspectives while actively working to dismantle systems of oppression and implicit bias. With a deeply-held belief in human potential, we transform lives and enable organizations to achieve new heights.

If you’re interested in partnering with us to develop or hire your workforce, let’s talk. If you’re a job seeker, please apply now!

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Avenica CEO Scott Dettman authors article for Training Magazine

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Avenica CEO Scott Dettman authors article for Training Magazine

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Biography

Avenica CEO Scott Dettman authored an article for Training Magazine advising employers on how to identify valuable skills that high-potential, entry-level candidates possess, rather than focusing on work experience and job-specific skills that can be taught and built into training.

“Identifying these valuable skills requires leaders to look beyond experience and the type of skills an employee could simply learn to do the job effectively. They must dig deep and rethink the questions they are asking to uncover these traits.”

About Avenica

Through conversation, high-impact coaching, and best-in-class support, we translate and meet the needs of our client partners by identifying and transforming potential into high-performing professionals. At Avenica, we are working from the inside out to embrace diverse thought and perspectives while actively working to dismantle systems of oppression and implicit bias. With a deeply-held belief in human potential, we transform lives and enable organizations to achieve new heights.

If you’re interested in partnering with us to develop or hire your workforce, let’s talk. If you’re a job seeker, please apply now!

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Dettman Interviewed for New Fortune Magazine Article

Avenica CEO Scott Dettman was featured in a Fortune Magazine article by McKenna Moore to discuss how the coronavirus pandemic will affect the hiring process for both job seekers and employers. While companies shift their focus onto new ways to work and remain relevant in the current environment, Dettman also expects to see changes in the way companies recruit and evaluate potential hires. Read the full story HERE.

If you’re a student nearing graduation, a recent grad, or an early professional looking to take full advantage of your degree, check out our Avenica Pathways career development program for behavioral assessments, personalized coaching, and other valuable insights.

About Avenica

Through conversation, high-impact coaching, and best-in-class support, we translate and meet the needs of our client partners by identifying and transforming potential into high-performing professionals. At Avenica, we are working from the inside out to embrace diverse thought and perspectives while actively working to dismantle systems of oppression and implicit bias. With a deeply-held belief in human potential, we transform lives and enable organizations to achieve new heights.

If you’re interested in partnering with us to develop or hire your workforce, let’s talk. If you’re a job seeker, please apply now!

Related Articles

Avenica Honors Juneteenth as a Company Holiday

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A Day to Celebrate: Avenica Honors Juneteenth as a Company Holiday

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Avenica

Earlier this month, we announced steps we’re taking to create what we hope will be meaningful and impactful change to create safer, more equitable, and more inclusive workplaces and communities.

As we look around, we’ve been encouraged by so many other companies across the country commit to doing the same in their own ways. Because we know that it isn’t our actions alone that will solve or end systemic racism, it’s all of us, taking individual steps in the right direction, that will turn the tide and create positive change.

Today we’re proud to take another step as we announced that from this year forward, Avenica will recognize and celebrate Juneteenth as an annual, company-paid holiday.

“Our hope is that this helps bring awareness to the significance and importance of this day and gives us all time to reflect and further educate ourselves,” says Scott Dettman, CEO, Avenica.

For more information and history on the “oldest nationally-celebrated commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States,” please visit the Juneteenth website.

About Avenica

Through conversation, high-impact coaching, and best-in-class support, we translate and meet the needs of our client partners by identifying and transforming potential into high-performing professionals. At Avenica, we are working from the inside out to embrace diverse thought and perspectives while actively working to dismantle systems of oppression and implicit bias. With a deeply-held belief in human potential, we transform lives and enable organizations to achieve new heights.

If you’re interested in partnering with us to develop or hire your workforce, let’s talk. If you’re a job seeker, please apply now!

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Avenica CEO featured in Fortune Magazine

Avenica CEO Scott Dettman was featured in Fortune Magazine’s Fortune 500 issue in an article covering the various challenges 2020 college grads are facing in an uncertain and unprecedented job market impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. Dettman also provided insight into how companies will have to change hiring practices and strategies in the future.

Read the full story HERE.

If you’re a student nearing graduation, a recent grad, or an early professional looking to take full advantage of your degree, check out our Avenica Pathways career development program for behavioral assessments, personalized coaching, and other valuable insights.

About Avenica

Through conversation, high-impact coaching, and best-in-class support, we translate and meet the needs of our client partners by identifying and transforming potential into high-performing professionals. At Avenica, we are working from the inside out to embrace diverse thought and perspectives while actively working to dismantle systems of oppression and implicit bias. With a deeply-held belief in human potential, we transform lives and enable organizations to achieve new heights.

If you’re interested in partnering with us to develop or hire your workforce, let’s talk. If you’re a job seeker, please apply now!

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Why Avenica Pathways is Personal

This week, we are officially launching free access for graduating seniors impacted by the COVID-19 crisis to our Avenica Pathways program – a career development program for college students that leverages expert assessment, coaching, and job readiness training to drastically impact the marketability of entry-level talent. We’ve taken Avenica’s signature candidate experience and curated it for the anxious college senior in an easy-to-use online experience. Again, this program is now free! Did I mention it was free?

There were a million reasons for us to do this – we understand that college seniors are experiencing extra anxiety, we feel that we have a moral obligation to help however we can in a crisis, we know pocketbooks are extra tight – the list goes on. But in many ways, this program feels personal. Current pandemic aside, we know the plight of being a college senior who doesn’t know what they’re doing after graduation.

We were them.

In 2010, I was a senior at the University of Texas at Austin – a campus of 50,000 and home of the diehard Texas Longhorns. I was in the English Honors program and had my sights set on graduating. Over the years, I had toyed with a number of ideas – entering academia, becoming a lawyer, covering the Arab Spring as a rogue journalist – but nothing held firm. I ended up staying a fifth year after being elected Student Body Vice President. It gave me time to add on a second BA, this time in Women’s and Gender Studies, and also gave me the incredible experience of being a student leader on a huge campus. But it also had the adverse effect of delaying the inevitable.

So in my super senior year, I was juggling an honors thesis, student government responsibilities, and LSAT prep classes. I was busy but unfocused, and if I’m being really honest, I think that was by design. As May loomed closer and the high from student leadership was wearing off, I was running out of time and ideas. I applied to Teach for America and freaked out at their offer to be placed in Tulsa, OK. I didn’t do as well on the LSAT as I’d hoped. (I mean, how could I have been surprised with all the roadblocks I’d created for myself?)

Look – I’m going to pause right here to say I know, I was a big nerd in school. And I had the luxury of being able to even consider different options, even if I failed at them. But today’s reality of frozen pipelines and rescinded offers is a stark contrast. I’m getting there.

So, May came and went. I moved back to my hometown of Houston and started working on a mayoral campaign. I realized city politics wasn’t for me. I tried my hand at technical writing. The lack of human interaction left me wanting more. Through good friendship and fortune, I landed an entry-level management consulting role at global giant Accenture. I felt like I’d finally hit my stride – I was constantly surrounded by people, I was challenged by my work, and I enjoyed the structured learning process and career path.

The rest, as they say, is history – or at least, it’s documented in my bio on the Avenica leadership page. But the importance of my time in consulting is that it gave me the gift of knowing more about myself: what motivated me, how I preferred to learn, how I preferred to work, my strengths as a teammate, my weaknesses with detail-oriented tasks, and much more.

I realized this: self-awareness is the key to finding the right job.

Today’s market is unlike anything we have ever seen. I was a scared and confused college senior during a “normal” time, and I can’t even begin to imagine what today’s seniors must be feeling. We are seeing record unemployment, corporate layoffs, and frozen or rescinded offers. There are so many things we can’t control. But here’s the good news – the one thing you can control is you.

I’m so proud of our Pathways program because it provides deep insights into a student’s existing potential and abilities. Being equipped with self-awareness and the tools to harness your gifts is a potent combination for job hunting at any level and in any economy. You have to know yourself to effectively sell yourself and convince an organization that you are uniquely suited for their team.

I can’t wait to help the class of 2020 see themselves as the amazing talent we already know they will be.

To register or learn more about Avenica Pathways, click HERE.

About Avenica

Through conversation, high-impact coaching, and best-in-class support, we translate and meet the needs of our client partners by identifying and transforming potential into high-performing professionals. At Avenica, we are working from the inside out to embrace diverse thought and perspectives while actively working to dismantle systems of oppression and implicit bias. With a deeply-held belief in human potential, we transform lives and enable organizations to achieve new heights.

If you’re interested in partnering with us to develop or hire your workforce, let’s talk. If you’re a job seeker, please apply now to connect with an Avenica Account Manager.

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Avenica CEO Scott Dettman Featured on WCCO Mid-Morning

Avenica CEO Scott Dettman joins WCCO Mid-Morning Hosts Jason DeRusha and Heather Brown to provide job search tips for graduating college students entering a job market impacted by COVID-19. Watch the full segment on WCCOTV or click below.

About Avenica

Through conversation, high-impact coaching, and best-in-class support, we translate and meet the needs of our client partners by identifying and transforming potential into high-performing professionals. At Avenica, we are working from the inside out to embrace diverse thought and perspectives while actively working to dismantle systems of oppression and implicit bias. With a deeply-held belief in human potential, we transform lives and enable organizations to achieve new heights.

If you’re interested in partnering with us to develop or hire your workforce, let’s talk. If you’re a job seeker, please apply now to connect with an Avenica Account Manager.

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Avenica CEO Scott Dettman Interview with Cory Hepola, WCCO

Avenica CEO Scott Dettman joined WCCO host Cory Hepola to talk about how companies are approaching the hiring process amid COVID-19, in addition to providing tips for job seekers who are now navigating a virtual job market.

Listen to the full interview on the WCCO Radio website, or click below.


About Avenica

Through conversation, high-impact coaching, and best-in-class support, we translate and meet the needs of our client partners by identifying and transforming potential into high-performing professionals. At Avenica, we are working from the inside out to embrace diverse thought and perspectives while actively working to dismantle systems of oppression and implicit bias. With a deeply-held belief in human potential, we transform lives and enable organizations to achieve new heights.

If you’re interested in partnering with us to develop or hire your workforce, let’s talk. If you’re a job seeker, please apply now to connect with an Avenica Account Manager.

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