Hiring great talent is a challenge for different managers in different niches across the economy. Take Tunde for instance who is a high-level co-founder of an e-commerce brand that is rapidly gaining its footing in the country.

In the last 9 months, Tunde has had to hire 3 different frontend Engineers to take care of an important project, yet there is still very little progress made on it. In fact, he fears that his company may have to extend the rollout date for a number of products—again— due to the inconsistencies of these engineers.

However, not every manager suffers this same fate, as an exclusive few understand what to look out for in tech talent and the mistakes other hiring managers make while finding these talents.

Here, we will show you some of these common—and unpopular— mistakes that hiring managers make and how you can avoid them.

• Being too passive with your hiring process: Sometimes, hiring is a bit like hunting. You cannot always wait for the game to waltz right into your trap before you hunt it down, but rather, you have to be proactive and track them down to the most regular routes they ply.  

This also applies to hiring as sometimes, putting out job ads and waiting for a response may not get you the best of the best out there. Yes, you may need to go out of your comfort zone to look for these talents in the places they hang out. Perhaps freelance job boards, websites, or even open-source forums like Quora, whichever it is, being passive with the hiring process is like waiting for a gazelle to enter your trap on one of your hunting trips in Sub-Saharan Africa, it may work but is not the most efficient way.

• Ignoring Testing Procedures: While this does not happen very often, a number of hiring managers ignore testing procedures for certain roles especially when the candidates “claim” to have this experience in their resume. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that the candidates are lying, but it is one thing to have worked with WordPress in 2021 and another to have used it last in 2019. This way, only a thorough testing procedure would reveal the better-suited candidate for the job role.

This would not only save you time, it would also save you Tunde-like headaches going forward on your projects.

• Making the hiring process unnecessarily long: Ahhhhh, yes, this one definitely has to be there. Some hiring managers seem to get so caught up in their roles (not a bad thing IMHO) that they begin to think they are judges at a Justice League tryout. Hear me out first, yes we know you want the best talent, but making the process unnecessarily long with 5-10 different testing stages (and don’t say it is a test of patience… this is not the Justice League) can put off some of the more qualified talents, who may need to take a leave of absence from their current place of employment.

This way, you may only end up with newbies who may not exactly be the best fit for your project.

• Lumping competencies that are not compatible in the same Job description: Increasingly becoming more common with hiring managers, putting job roles with far-flung competencies may attract generalists for a project that needs specialists.

It’s just like scouting for a football player that can play as a defender, midfielder, goalkeeper, and attacker, and I reckon they don’t exist (unless of course, you need James Milner). When you do this, you end up getting an individual to fill the role… but perhaps not the best person for the job.

• Be Ready To Pay What The Talent is worth: You thought I was going to forget the money part??? When you want to hire “top talent” you should be ready to pay this talent for their time, expertise, and effort.

Yes, I reckon the talent already knows how to garner “exposure” and would not want you to make that one of the currencies you’ll pay with.

When you can offer adequate remunerations, talents working with you would understand you value their expertise and time and would be eager to give their all.

I hope we have been able to point you in the right direction with some of these tips here. It does not matter if the talent is not in the tech niche, this can also work well no matter the business you operate.

However, if you’d love to avoid these mistakes and hire only the best hands for your jobs, then you can send a short message to info@nands.io.

We would be ready to listen to you, sit down with you, and draw up a realistic and workable plan for your project.