What does a bad hire cost your company? It can be hard to quantify, but let’s consider a few of the ramifications.

Your time

To bring that bad hire on, you had to write a job description and post it on various websites. That took time. Then, as the applications and resumes flooded in, you had to read them, sort them, and decide which candidates to interview. That took time, too. But even then, you weren’t done. You had to interview candidates, choose one, have that person fill out paperwork, and train him or her for the new position. When you add up all that time, you can see how expensive a bad hire can be in time alone.

Money

Each hour you spend doing one of the above tasks costs your company money. That’s time you could have spent doing something more productive like making new business contacts, working on long-term projects, or supervising employees. Hour-for-hour, bringing on a bad hire can be very expensive.

Morale

Any time your work team is shaken up, employees get a little bit edgy. What will the new person be like? Will the dynamics of the group change? When it turns out that the new person is not a good fit, morale takes a hit, and the rest of your work force suffers. Perhaps the candidate turned out to be a bad hire because they don’t use their time wisely, which affects everyone else’s productivity. Maybe their skills aren’t up to snuff. Whatever it is, you soon realize your mistake, even if the results are difficult to quantify.
These costs really add up, but what can you do about it? The best thing to do is to ask a recruiting agency to find your new employee in the first place. How could a recruiting agency help you to avoid a bad hire?

Networking

A good recruiting agency has access to an extensive network of workers in your area. The larger that network is, the more options you’ll have to choose your new employee. That means that you’ll be able to be pickier about the person who comes to work for you. You’ll be able to get the education, experience, and skills your company needs.

Screening

A recruiting agency has vast experience in screening candidates for jobs. You probably hire a few times a year, but a recruiting agency hires all day every day. That experience makes a recruiting agency very adept at finding the right person for a position. A recruiting agency knows which questions to ask and how to gauge the person’s answers. A recruiting agency follows up on references and portfolios, so you don’t have to spend time and effort wading through more information than you have to.

Testing

A recruiting agency can test candidates to find out what skills they really have. Sometimes a resume doesn’t tell the whole story, and that’s where employers sometimes get into trouble. But a recruiting agency can test candidates to find out how fast they really type, whether or not they’re experts on local building codes, and how well they know html. These tests not only screen out candidates that can’t do your job effectively, but they give you peace of mind, knowing that you’re hiring someone who will add measurably to your work force.