How To Avoid A Bad Hire

Picture source: http://www.success.com
INDUSTRIAL ENGINEER – VOLUME 47, NUMBER 4

Alternate wording in employement ads increases number, quality of applicants
Jones, a business professor at the University of Vermont, co-authored a study that examined the phraseology used in job advertisements for a large engineering consulting company in Canada. Ads that focused on what the organization could supply to an applicant received almost three times as many highly rated applicants as ads that concentrated on the job hunters’ demands and abilities.

The findings could help tremendously, as bad hiring decisions cost employeers millions of dollars, damage workplace morale, reduce productivity and acount for more than half of employee turnover nationwide.

Jones emphasized that adding such “needs-supplies” statements to ads won’t work if they aren’t true.

“If you create what is called a phychological contract where the applicant has an expectation of what is going to happen as an employee and then it doesn’t, the people you hire are less likely to go above and beyond and are more likely to quit much sooner than they otherwise would”, he said.