The New Year has begun and with it the season of good intentions; many will be formulated with determination and given up shortly after. If you’re looking to turn your good intentions into action in 2013, continue reading to learn about the most common mistakes in personnel selection.

1) Oftentimes there is insufficient information in the job posting or there is no consensus amongst the evaluators on the specific skills you are looking for in your candidates.

Tip: Define, with the department, a clear requirement profile before you create the job posting. Your departments often know exactly what skills and abilities a suitable candidate for the position must have.

2) The recruiting process takes too long. Many applicants jump ship during the selection process.

Tip: Keep your candidates up to date about the status of their application. Also try and complete the selection process as fast as you can, within reason of course.

3) There is no structure in the selection method or in the evaluations.

Tip: Choose a structure based on your objectives. Strictly keep this structure throughout the process. By doing this you guarantee every applicant a fair and comparable process and an objective hiring decision.

4) Many recruited candidates have similar backgrounds and mentalities.

Tip: Use the defined requirements in the evaluation of the documents as well as in the implementation and evaluation of personal interviews. Such a structured and transparent approach reduces the influence of “unqualified evaluation criteria”.

5)There is no consensus about the selected candidates due to a lack of communication and cooperation between staff and department.

Tip: Include the departments and hiring managers early on in the recruitment process. Pre-recorded video interviews give them the chance to participate in the beginning stages. The evaluators can view the short video sequences when they have time. In addition, they rate each candidate on pre-determined criteria. Ratings will be calculated and displayed so that you can easily see who is the best candidate.

6) You do not have valuable information about the candidates as you asked the wrong interview questions. 

Tip: Select questions based on the job requirements. Use different types of questions and avoid closed or suggestive questions. Also, ask for specific behaviors and try to formulate your questions so they are as unambiguous as possible.

7) The interviewer speaks significantly more than the applicant.

Tip: It comes back to selecting the proper questions. Use openended question formats (ex. “What was situation X?” instead of “Have you ever experienced situation X?”) In video interviews, the focus is on the applicant. You ask the questions and provide the preparation and response time. In this way, you set the default of 80% of the speech portion of the tenderer.

8) Believing that experience is enough to identify eligible candidates; going by gut feelings; or choosing someone just because of how long they’ve been working at the company.

Tip: Tip: Avoid assessment errors, such as expectancy effects, position effects, contrast effects, halo effects or stereotyping. Being aware of these tendencies helps you to avoid them. In addition, use several selection methods to make decisions.

9) Only using one selection method to identify the best candidates.

Tip: Tip: Take advantage of a multimodal screening and use a variety of appropriate selection methods to get an accurate picture of your candidate’s skills.