Signs that You Should Not Hire The Person You are Interviewing

It makes perfect sense that January is the time in which people make a decision to change. But with change comes putting yourself out there and applying for new positions.

The key problem for employers is that they can often only go on face value, because let's face it, you are not going to give them a person who will give you a bad reference and you will probably doctor your CV so that all short term employment becomes "contracting" or "consulting" particularly in the marketing world. 

If you are about to hire someone in marketing, think about a few things:

• Notice periods are always a month or more. Usually, two to three months. If they take a job in a shorter time frame it means that they either are not important to the organisation and therefore are possibly not going to be important to yours, or that they are lying or being deceitful to get out of their current contract, usually using mental health issues as the easiest "out".
• Talk to their current employer regardless. That means if you employ someone in any marketing position, by all means offer them the job, subject to having a conversation with their current employer. You will learn more out of that than you will in another hiring mistake.
• Make sure their references were actually the bosses of the companies they worked for, not a friend who was a colleague.
• Get them to do a test of some sort and definitely psyche profile the candidate. This will help you work out whether they will be a good fit for your company culture.
• Know the difference between a good sales person and a competent marketer with the right attitude to fit into your culture.
• Test your candidate on their sense of entitlement. What do they think they are entitled to as opposed to what is the reality within your organisation.
• If they are job hoppers, make sure you contact every previous employer. Chances are that you will train them, they will learn more skills and then they will hop again because they believe they "know everything". 

Questions we all would like to ask, but can't:

• How many sick days have you had in the past 12 months and were they on Friday's or Monday's or next to public holidays. And... what was the reason; diahorrea, migraines or something else?
• How well did you get on with your colleagues?
• How would your colleagues rate your attitude towards the company you worked for?
• How often do you work overtime and if you don't, which many jobs in marketing don't seem to anymore, how often do you turn up late to work each week with the excuse of trams?
• What salary do you expect now and what salary do you expect to be on in 12 months time?

If only we could ask all of these questions, but we can't. That is not politically correct even though we would all make less hiring mistakes.

Getting new employees to sign off that everything they have communicated is true and accurate is critical. Also, making sure that they know that a contract is a contract and that it will be enforced regardless.