6 Hiring Mistakes Employers Make (and How to Fix Them Fast)
Episode 2
“Why can’t I find the right people anymore?”
If you’ve ever asked that question, you’re not alone. In episode 2 of The People Success Circle, I’m breaking down six common hiring mistakes that quietly sabotage your ability to attract and hire great talent, from outdated job descriptions to unclear interview processes and underused employee referrals.
Whether you're leading HR or running your own business, this episode offers practical fixes you can implement right away.
Tune in or read on to improve your hiring strategy and bring in the right people, faster.
In this episode, I break down six common hiring mistakes that are costing companies time, talent, and trust — and I share practical ways to fix them.
You’ll learn:
How to improve the hiring process by defining clear steps and decision-makers
Why passive recruiting leads to poor results — and how to build a more proactive approach
Tips on how to improve employer branding through LinkedIn, social media, and your careers page
The interview process best practices that create alignment and speed up hiring
Why interview training for managers is critical — and often overlooked
The value of looking inward: internal hiring vs external hiring and developing existing talent
Practical takeaways grounded in best practices in talent acquisition to help you hire the right people, faster
If you're ready to attract better candidates and make smarter hiring decisions, this episode gives you the tools to get there.
🔗 Helpful Links
🌐 Mindy’s website for business consulting: https://www.limerockcareerco.com
🎧 Listen to the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts
Episode 2: Watch or Listen
Key Takeaways from This Episode: Common Hiring Mistakes Are Costing You Top Talent
Hiring mistakes are often blamed on a lack of qualified candidates, but the real issue is usually internal. Outdated job descriptions, undefined processes, and lack of coordination among team members are just a few of the common hiring mistakes that drive away great candidates.
How to Improve the Hiring Process (and Fill Roles Faster)
One of the most important takeaways from this episode is the need to clearly define your hiring process before posting the job. Know who is involved in interviews, what each step looks like, and how decisions are made. A streamlined process reduces your time to fill and creates a better experience for candidates.
Interview Training for Managers Is Not Optional
Most managers are never trained to interview, and that’s a problem. Effective interview training for managers ensures your team is aligned on what “qualified” really means and helps avoid costly mis-hires. This includes using structured interview guides and asking questions tied to real job competencies.
The Interview Process Needs a Strategy, Not Guesswork
Consistency is key. Clear interview process best practices (like structured questions and aligned expectations) improve decision-making, reduce bias, and lead to better hires. You’ll also avoid confusing or alienating candidates with unclear or conflicting interview experiences.
How to Improve Employer Branding and Attract the Right People
Candidates will look up your company immediately after being contacted. That’s why it’s critical to improve your employer branding, especially on LinkedIn, your website’s careers page, and review platforms like Glassdoor. Show off your company culture, internal mobility, and employee stories.
Internal Hiring vs External Hiring — Don't Overlook Existing Talent
Many companies overlook the talent they already have. One of the biggest missed opportunities is failing to promote from within. This episode reminds us that internal hiring vs external hiring isn't just a trade-off — it's a chance to reward loyalty, reduce onboarding time, and grow stronger teams from within.
Adopt Best Practices in Talent Acquisition
Modern talent acquisition best practices go beyond posting a job and hoping for the best. Think: proactive networking, a clear referral strategy, consistent employer presence online, and well-prepared interviewers. These elements combine to create a hiring engine that actually works.
Read the full transcript
Welcome to the People Success Circle, your go-to source for actionable insights and strategies to create thriving workplaces and rewarding careers. I'm Mindy East, an HR leader with over 28 years of experience helping businesses and individuals unlock their full potential.
Whether you're a business leader looking to build a stronger team or a professional ready to thrive, you're in the right place. Get ready to uncover proven strategies for success, both personal and organizational. Let's dive in.
Welcome back to the People Success Circle podcast.
In episode one of this series called The Big Disconnect, I uncovered what the issue is.
I talked about how employers say they can't find good people and how job seekers say they can't find a good job. In this next episode of the series, I'm going to focus on the employer side of the equation. So many times employers say, there's just a shortage of good people.
In reality, the hiring issue often stems from outdated hiring processes, bad job descriptions, and a lack of strategy to recruit the best people. In this episode, I'll be sharing six hiring mistakes that are causing this disconnect for employers, and I will share tips and best practices on how to resolve them.
Then stick around for episode three in this series where I will uncover the things that job seekers are doing to get in the way of them landing the job that they desire. Thank you for joining me in this series and let's get started. One of the first issues that I see employers make when they are hiring is that they're not doing an effective job creating job descriptions that speak to the person that they're trying to hire. This could be for a variety of different reasons.
I often see employers use outdated job descriptions. They'll just go to the file and pull it out from the last time they had to hire this role and post that job again. What happens is this starts the whole process off on the wrong foot because job seekers use these job descriptions to not only tailor their resume and cover letter to get noticed, but also to prepare for the interview. And then what happens is the interview takes place and the hiring manager is shaking their head saying, this isn't what I need. And the job seeker is lost because they prepared for the interview based on the job description that they were given.
The other issue we have with job descriptions is that so many times companies are using AI to create a job description. Let's say the opening is for a restaurant manager. We all know that restaurants are not the same. You could work for a fast food restaurant, you could work for a five star restaurant and everything in between. And if we go to AI, it will spit out a more generic job description without tailoring it specifically to the role that the restaurant needs.
They take the risk of giving the job seeker something that won't help them prepare for the interview. We need the job descriptions to be updated and not generic. The last issue I often see with job descriptions is that we load them with so many things for the employee to do that when a job seeker sees that, they're pretty much discouraged before they even apply. They're thinking, my gosh, they want me to do all of this for that amount of money? I'm not even going to apply.
So what could be the solution for this?
In order to effectively hire, we need to take the time to create a job description that matches what we're looking for as close as we can. Now I often hear people say, Mindy, I will never have every single thing this person's responsible for in a job description. And I get it. In fact, I agree. You will never have every single thing that the person is responsible for in a job description.
However, you can create a description that gives a high enough level of detail that someone could see themselves in that role. That's what we want.
We want somebody to read the job description and say, I can see myself in that role and I want to do that job. When job descriptions are written in a way that attracts the best talent, then employers win. The second issue I see with employers is that the hiring process is not only not clearly defined, but it doesn't really align with what they're looking for. So many times a company will post a job without even knowing who's part of the interview process, like how many people are going to interview this person. What does the interview process look like? Does it start with a recruiter for a 20 minute phone screen? Then does it go to an in-person with the hiring manager? And then is there a panel interview after that? So many times it's not defined.
The other advice I give to companies is that they want to make sure that everybody who's part of that hiring process fully understands and buys in to the job description. If you're pulling someone in to be part of the hiring process and that's not how they see that the job should be done, then you're going to have another additional disconnect. I often see that companies who have an undefined process have a much longer time to fill. That's the time from when the position opened to the time that it's actually filled.
That's called time to fill. And when we don't have a clear process for what that's going to look like, the interviewing can go on and on, and there's a lot of negative things that can happen when the process goes on too long.
The first issue could be that we're losing good candidates. Candidates don't want to interview six, seven, eight times for a position.
They also don't want to go weeks before they hear the next step in the hiring. process, which affects our customer experience, our ability to grow our sales and profits, and it can affect employee morale when we have people doing more work than they signed up for. When companies have a streamlined hiring process, it reduces the steps in the interview process, causing that job to be filled that much faster.
It can also automate administrative tasks and increase the communication for the job seeker so that they have a good experience. What's the solution for a complicated hiring process? The first step I recommend is for companies to outline the process of hiring someone before they even post the job. Because immediately when they post a job, people are going to start applying. And if they don't know who's the first person who's gonna interview them, what's gonna happen after they pass a phone screen, et cetera, we're already increasing the time to fill and leaving our job seekers with ambiguity on what's gonna happen.
The next step in improving the hiring process is determining who is part of the decision-making process. Who gets a say in whether or not this person gets hired.
It's important to define that early. and make sure that all the people in the decision-making process have aligned with the quality of the job description and the expectations for success for the person who is going to fill this role. When we have one person who thinks the job should be done this way and another person who thinks the job should be done a different way, it's going to be hard for that hiring team to agree on what they're looking for.
So deciding those things upfront is very beneficial. Another benefit of having a well-ironed out hiring process is to improve the candidate experience. In recruiting and human resources, we often preach about having an effective experience for the person who we're bringing into the company. Now, whether that person gets hired or not, we want the hiring process to end with everybody wishing that they got the job, whether they did or not. and then the person who got the job to be extremely excited to be part of the new team. When we have long periods of time when job seekers haven't heard back from us or we have confusion in the process, and this could mean that the person doesn't want to be a customer with our company someday.
A well-ironed out hiring process can eliminate those issues, make a great experience for the job seeker, and fill the position that much quicker.
Did you know that statistically 92 % of people who conduct interviews for a company have never been trained to do so? That brings me to number three. When a company has not trained their teams to interview and select well, then we have an increased chance that the team's not gonna agree on what a good candidate looks like and we're also not setting up the candidate for success if they were to get the job.
If the members of the hiring team have not been trained to interview, it increases the chances that the selection of the new hire won't go well. We tend to think about hiring as recruiting somebody and then interviewing someone. But having quality selection skills is key to hiring the best people. What do I mean by that? I mean that if companies have created interview guides that have questions tailored to the job that they're trying to fill, it will increase the chances of selecting on the right criteria.
So this could mean creating interview questions based on the leadership competencies needed for the role or creating interview questions to verify that someone has the experience for the role. Lastly, it could ensure that the interview questions assess for the skills and transferable skills needed for someone to be successful. Putting time into training everyone who's part of the interview process and creating quality questions to assess someone will go a long way to making the right hire. The fourth issue that I see when companies are having a hard time hiring great people is that they're simply relying too much on passive recruiting. That means that they're posting jobs on online platforms and simply waiting for the right person to apply.
This could extend the amount of time that the job is open and it could also keep you from finding the right person. When we rely solely on passive recruiting, we're missing out on candidates who are not looking for a job. Oftentimes those can be the best candidates.
What should companies do instead of relying on job postings?
They should have a multi-prong job search strategy. Employers that are proactive with looking for quality talent spend time networking. They're out in their field meeting people and proactively looking for top talent. They also have a strong presence on LinkedIn. A company LinkedIn profile and Profiles of the senior leaders in a company can attract job seekers to the company even when there's not a job posted.
HR, we know that our most talented new hires are referred from our current employees. It's critical to have an effective and alive employee referral program that your employees know about.
They see people being rewarded and that it's an active way for employers to be bringing in new candidates. Speaking of LinkedIn, that brings me to number five. A common mistake that I see employers make over and over again is not having an employment brand.
What do I mean by that?
I mean what people think of when they think of working at your company. Does your company have a good reputation for taking care of their employees? Or are you simply the best kept secret out there in your field? One of my current clients, I would say fits that. profile of being an employer that's the best kept secret in their community. want people to think of working at their company right away when they're looking for a new opportunity.
But people don't know how great it is to work there. In fact, they even say that future customers will tour their company and say, gosh, I'm surprised at the great culture that this company has. You don't want people to be surprised.
We don't want people to be surprised when they get hired to find out it's a great place to work. We wanna put that information out there before we even start recruiting. That means that a LinkedIn presence for the company is important. Research tells us that within two minutes of being invited to interview at a company, the job seeker is looking on their phone, to find out information about the company.
And you need to ask yourself:
What are they gonna find about your company? Job seekers now can look at Glassdoor.com, Salary.com, your LinkedIn profiles, your LinkedIn page for the company.
They can look all over on the internet to find out what it's like to work there. I encourage employers to be proactive with the information that they put out there. Make sure that the career section of your website has detailed information about the culture, what benefits are provided, what employees say about working there. Make sure that online, whether it be Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, or LinkedIn, that your company shows what it's like to be an employee.
This could be putting pictures up of the holiday party or the company picnic. It could be talking about the company's matching gift program. Could be talking about the fact that employees frequently get promoted from within.
In fact, one of my clients, a surveying company, told me that they fill 72 % of their jobs from within. And that is something that companies should be broadcasting because internal mobility and getting promoted from within is something that could definitely attract good people.
Having a great company culture and a great employee brand is extremely important to job seekers.
So don't be shy about sharing what's happening at your company and sharing the things that could attract the right people. The last mistake that companies are making is that they're not recognizing internal talent and that they're not developing their internal staff to fill roles.
Sometimes it's hard for us to think of an employee in the next role. If employees are given training that could help them, improve their skills, we might be surprised how great the talent is at the company before even looking outside.
That means providing development, stretch assignments, involving people in different cross-departmental projects so that as a company we're growing talent from within.
A common mistake is that the talent is right there in front of them. That's a wrap for today's episode of the People Success Circle, where we uncovered the six things that companies are doing to keep them from finding great talent.
If you found this episode helpful, subscribe, leave a review, or share it with a hiring manager who could benefit from the tips in this episode. And don't miss next week's episode where we shift to the job seeker side of the equation, where we uncover what's keeping them from getting hired and keeping them from standing out. Until then, remember that when we put people first, businesses thrive. I'll see you next week.
