What is the true cost of hiring the wrong person?
It's higher than it seems. Some of the unpleasant side-effects of bringing onboard an ill-fitting employee are:
- Lost performance (as in, "lots of lost performance")
- Poor quality of delivered work
- Degraded employee morale.
It's a drag on everyone, including the new hire.
We use recruiters, thank you very much!
The said truth is recruiters can't tell Morts from Elvises. They need help too. Recruiters aren't subject matter experts (very few actually are) and therefore have to trust candidates' resumes. Which should not be trusted.
Therein lies the conundrum.
So, yes, please use recruiters, but put a technical screener in-between to make sure you get truly qualified candidates.
It's a proverbial win-win. It's good for recruiters (they earn their fees), and you hire Elvises (or, at least, the cup of hiring Morts passes you).
Our team interviews each candidate
Just about every interview I've witnessed in my career has been inadequate. To some people, in-person interviews are an annoying chore. Other's simply don't know how to conduct one.
Interviews should be rigorous and thorough, and must be conducted by several team members. But first, the candidate must be screened, or the interview becomes everybody's waste of time and money!
"Previous experiences" are irrelevant. At any new job, a person may simply find himself out of his depth, over- or under-qualified. Hence past performance is no indication of future performance.
Someone who was a total Elvis at a previous company may find himself a lowly Mort at yours. Or vice versa. You must ensure you're hiring an Elvis for an Elvis position.
We prefer to hire people with certificates
Certs are no indication of a person's technical prowess at all! They are useless.
The certification system is too rigged to be trusted. In fact, I've noticed an inverse correlation: the more certs a person had on the resume, the poorer he/she performed at an interview.
In my screening practice, I ignore the candidate's certifications altogether.