Avoid Common Recruiting Mistakes

Most Common Recruiter Mistakes (and How to Avoid them)

I see recruiting as a crucial part of my marketing efforts. If my team works well, candidates will fall in love with my brand just based on the interaction with my recruiters. But if they don’t deliver service with the customers in mind, it will hurt the experience and how they feel about my company and my brand. I expect excellence with the candidates in mind, with everything they do.

We talk a lot about how you can do your best as a candidate for a position. There’s nearly always more than one applicant and you need to stand out. Whatever you can do to avoid small or big mistakes helps you in securing your next dream role. But for recruiters, flawless execution during the recruitment process is equally important. In our next series of three, we will dive into the most common mistakes recruiters make during the recruitment process, and how you can avoid them.

1. Looking for the Purple Squirrel

As a recruiter, you may write the job posting yourself or it may be the hiring manager or an HR specialist. Whoever drafts it needs to make sure that the job posting is realistic, attainable, inclusive, and adequately narrow. Read our post about how to draft the perfect job description, but in a nutshell: a good job posting attracts the right talent, and invites them to apply.

If you are realistic about what you need for the successful execution of the position in question, you have the biggest chance of having a good set of applicants. Think twice whether you need an MBA for a sales representative or 10 years of experience for a financial clerk. On the other hand, don\’t cast a net 50 miles wide because you may miss the perfect candidate as you try to sift through the stacks and stacks of applicants.

2. Wrong, or Lacking Technology

The days of having to invite applicants to write, print and post a letter and resume are long over. I still see them – “you can send your resume to…”, with a physical address. In this day and age, using the appropriate technology serves so many purposes.

First, it’s easier for the candidate. The less friction the candidate encounters, the better the first impression. Second, it’s easier for you. No more collecting, filing, and archiving, but everything handy, and ready to be used in other systems and archives. Using a good ATS saves you and the candidate time and ensures all required information is there where it needs to be.

Alternatively, mess up this part of the process and candidates either drop out of the process or think less of your employer brand. And think of automating parts of your process, alleviating your hiring team from planning nightmares and allowing for review of candidates when it suits you. The interview tools of AskAway for instance, help you do just that, and bring the whole process to a higher level. Give it a try – for free.

3. Not Following Up on Candidates you Sourced

Obviously, you are a proactive recruiter. You learn, read (hence why you’re here) and you do your best to stay ahead of the rest of the market. So, obviously, you always follow up with candidates you have sourced yourself. If you find a potentially good fit on one of the social media platforms, such as LinkedIn and you reach out, make sure to put a reminder in your system to follow up in case you don’t get a response. It may be that they don’t go to the message section of LinkedIn often, or they may have missed your message. Either way, giving a friendly nudge a week later may mean the next potential superstar fits responds. If nothing else, it shows that you are serious and your process is spot on. Your candidate will pick up on this signal.

4. You Don’t Pre-Screen

In my books this is a big no-no, especially as far as your employer (or client) is concerned. The candidate may look like a Major League Star on paper, you will only know if it’s indeed MLB and not the Little League if you engage with the candidate. You have to talk to them before you invite them. You can use the phone, but we discussed why this only addresses a few of the critical elements. Ideally, you see them.

Use video technology to truly interact with the candidate. I have seen some absolutely stellar resumes that tell a very convincing story, but you’ll not know whether the candidate is a fit until you can look into their eyes. Inviting them for a face-to-face in your office is a step too late and involves cost of travel and the burden of planning. Build in time and the use of technology to get a solid understanding of the candidate through a pre-screen.

5. Not Preparing the Candidate

A good recruiter will make sure that the candidate is prepared and helped to do well in the interview. Part of that is helping them with providing information about the job, with a good posting. Second, it is a good idea to help prepare the candidate by sending them reports and other information. Work together with your marketing and communication team and create a clip showcasing your company. Point to your social media channels.

A good candidate will find the information to prepare for the interview. But allow them to prepare on the content of the job and questions by supporting them on the background and culture. By the way – it is a very good marketing tool where you can push your brand message in a very natural way.

About us

AskAway is disrupting the way recruitment is done, by eliminating the need to plan and schedule time-consuming meetings in packed agendas. We offer tools to record or even prerecord interviews. This allows you and your hiring team the opportunity to share and analyze the candidates for your interviews when it suits you. We pre-screen so you don’t have to.

Why Interviewing Tools Matter

I eagerly awaited this interview—the candidate’s resume was perfect: experienced, a former major consulting firm staffer, and stellar qualifications. Yet, the interview started poorly; he joined our Google Meet 10 minutes late due to “technical issues,” which already had me questioning his readiness.

His nervousness was clear; his answers were hesitant and his eyes frequently darted away from the camera. When I tested his Java knowledge, his response was vague and off-topic, heavily padded with irrelevant jargon.

This experience underscored the importance of pre-screening tools like AskAway, which help ensure that we only spend time on candidates who are truly qualified. By filtering out less promising candidates early, we can focus our efforts on those who are most likely to succeed in the role, saving time and improving the interview process.