2.134 The 9 Hiring Mistakes That Cost You Time, Money and Team Morale

Hiring great people sounds simple — until it isn’t. 

If you’ve ever found yourself wondering why a new hire didn’t work out, you’re not alone. From rushing the process to writing generic job ads, most hiring mistakes come down to one key issue: a lack of clarity. 

In this episode, Karen Kirton shares the nine most common hiring mistakes that cost businesses time, money, and team morale — and, more importantly, how to avoid them. 

You’ll learn: 
✅ Why clarity before hiring is the key to recruiting the right person 
✅ How to write job ads that attract the right candidates (not everyone) 
✅ Why speed doesn’t equal success in recruitment 
✅ The importance of onboarding ownership and new-hire feedback 
✅ How connection and structure lead to long-term retention 

Whether you’re hiring your first employee or building a growing team, this episode will help you create a smoother, more strategic process that sets new hires, and your business, up for success. 

💡 Need help reviewing or improving your hiring process?
Amplify HR helps small and medium-sized businesses build clarity, connection, and confidence in recruitment and onboarding. Visit amplifyhr.com.au for more 

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Get our free eBook packed with practical strategies to attract, engage, and retain top talent. Perfect for business owners and leaders focused on building a thriving team. Download it at amplifyhr.com.au/downloadable/find-grow-keep

Transcript

Karen Kirton    
Welcome to Episode 134 and today I thought it's time to talk about something that seems simple until it isn't, and that is the process of hiring great people into our business. 
You know, we post the ad, we shortlist, we interview think we found the perfect person. But a few months later, we're wondering what went wrong there. Hiring mistakes don't just waste money. They waste time. They frustrate your team, they damage morale. 
And we know from various estimates that it costs somewhere between 50% and 200% of the person's salary every time someone walks out the door. So today, we're going to look at the nine most common hiring mistakes that can cost you time, money. 
And team morale, but more importantly, how to avoid them. Mistake number one is starting without clarity, and this is the biggest one. Honestly, it is the cause of most hiring problems. If you are not clear on exactly what success looks like in the role. And by that I don't mean tasks, I mean outcomes. You cannot hire the right person. Now I remember having a conversation with one business owner. He said to me that he had gone to market for the same role more than five times in one year and he was telling me how it was a problem with each one of those candidates. 
But it wasn't a problem with the candidates, it was a problem with the process. They didn't really understand what they were hiring for. And so then of course, just couldn't recruit the right person. You know, if you don't have clarity, you can't possibly give clarity to the candidates through the job ad or through the interview process. 
And it is so easy to be in a rush. We just need to get someone on board so we don't worry too much about the job ad. We just put it out there and we'll see what happens. But that will cost you more in the long run in wasted time and confused candidates. 
And the cost of these isn't just in time, it's also performance of your other team members who have someone in the business. That's not a great fit and you know there was a report from CV check that said the average cost of hiring someone in Australia on the average of about $80,000 a year. 
Costs around $45,000 once you include training, lost productivity and the hiring process. So before you post an ad, ask yourself what is success in this role Look like in three months? What about in six months? What about in 12 months? 
Because if you can't answer that clearly, then you're just not ready to hire mistake #2 is writing job ads that attract everybody, but actually just end up attracting no one because most job ads today sell it. They were written by AI, and they probably are, but we can still do better than generic. 
Statements like we're a fast paced dynamic team or we're looking for a motivated self starter. You know this tells people nothing about what makes your workplace unique. A good job ad filters the right candidates in and the wrong ones out. It's your first chance to communicate your culture and your. 
Values. So instead of listing duties, describe the impact. So rather than saying you're gonna be managing projects that are between X size and Z size, say you're gonna lead projects that will help small businesses thrive. And that's a purpose. It's specific. It's emotionally engaging. So it'll attract people that. 
Care about your mission and not just the job title. When your ad speaks to your businesses values and your purpose, you will spend less time screening and more time connecting with the right people. Mistake #3 is relying only. 
On job ads, so posting a job and waiting. It's not really a hiring strategy. You know, for some roles, that's a hope strategy. The best candidate. Sometimes they're not scrolling job boards, they are already in jobs. They're working. They're not necessarily looking, but they might be open to the right opportunity. 
So if you've got a particularly tricky role and you're only looking at active candidates and you are potentially competing in the most expensive and crowded part of the job market, so start building relationships before you have a job opening. Talk about your culture online. Celebrate your team. 
Referrals. Think about people that left your business on good terms. Could you ask them for referrals, or would any of them come back as Boomerang employees because your next great hire might be someone that already knows about your business. 
But they just haven't thought about applying for a role with you yet. Mistake #4 confusing speed with efficiency. This is a common one. Someone resigns panic sets in, and suddenly the goal is we've just got to fill that role. 
But if you've ever done this, I know that you're going to agree with me. A rushed higher usually means a wrong hire. You know, if we skip references, shorten interviews. If we step into desperation, we know that often that's going to cost us months of lost performance. 
Looking at AHRI, which is Australian Human Resources Institute's work Outlook report, it shows that over 1/3 of Australian businesses are currently struggling to fill roles, so it's no wonder speed can feel like success. But hiring fast and hiring well are not the same. 
Thing. So here's a rule to consider holding yourself to if you don't have clarity on the role alignment from those that are going to be involved in the role and buy in, then you're just not ready to start that process. You know, slow down at the start. 
So you can speed up once you have the right candidate mistake. #5 is hiring only from gut film and you've probably done this. You know the candidate walks in, you click and you think, oh, you know, they're so nice at the end of the chat, you're like, yeah, this person just feels right. 
But gut feel can often also mean similarity bias. You liked them because they reminded you of someone successful. They you liked them because they reminded you of yourself. It could be that that person is just really good at interviewing. 
But that doesn't mean that they're really good at the job. You know, it's reported that structured interviews, so where every candidate is asked the same behavioural based questions can be twice as effective at predicting success compared to informal chats. 
Now I'm a big believer in gut feel and instinct. So I would say absolutely trust your gut. Trust your trust, your instincts, but validate them. Use scorecards, criteria, feedback from other interviewers. 
Because liking someone is not the same as someone being right for that job. 
Mistake number six, internal misalignment and this one's a little bit sneaky. We don't always realise that we might have two people that are really reliant on this role and they're both helping to hire for it, but unknowingly they both have slightly different pictures of what they're looking for. But maybe one person is looking. 
More for a particular skill the other person is looking more for fit and the candidate walks away a little. Unsure of what the role involves, but maybe they still join and then their expectations are just not met. 
And no one's happy, and that mismatch creates really early disengagement and can also cause quick turnover, according to jobs and skills Australia, 41% of employers report replacing staff every six months or less. 
So that's a huge red flag. So if there's more than one of you that are making the decision around the hire, have a 15 minute chat before you start the process. So before you put the job ad out before you start shortlisting because that might save you six months of problems. 
OK, mistake #7 treating onboarding just as a checklist. So a great hire can turn into a disengaged employee in weeks if onboarding is rushed or transactional. One Gallup report showed that only 12% of employees strongly agree that their organisation does a great job of onboarding. 
So onboarding isn't about speed, it's about connection. Connection to you as a manager, connection to your business, connection to the role and the Australian Department of Employment and Workplace Relations has reported that 20% of employee turnover happens within the first 45 days. 
So don't just focus on onboarding paperwork. You know you need to make onboarding an experience that really welcomes people into your culture and not just a workflow related is mistake #8. So no ownership of onboarding. I get asked this a lot. Who owns onboarding? 
Is it HR? Is it the manager and in some businesses it's no one which is also not great because that means it's really inconsistent. The best onboarding happens when HR build the framework and the manager delivers the experience, so your HR. 
Professional can absolutely create a great onboarding process, but the manager has to handle and create that relationship. That engagement, that sense of belonging, that involvement you need to create accountability on both sides to make. 
Onboarding happen. So if you have an HR person, they should have the dates and they should be telling the manager. This is what's happening. This is what you need to do and coaching them if necessary through what that looks like and then the manager needs to actually enact the process consistently. 
And we should be on, you know, measuring onboarding success as seriously as we measure sales or customer satisfaction. So actually asking our new hires, which takes us to mistake #9, which is that we're ignoring feedback from new hires or we're just not asking for it. 
So our newest employees give us a great perspective on our business, on our culture, on what's happening. You know, they see things that other people have just learned to ignore. So ask them for their feedback early. What surprised them, what was confusing, what helped them feel like part of the team. 
A Qualtrics survey found that while 62% of new hires in Australia feel engaged within the first few months, only 25% plan to stay longer than three years. So that tells us that engagement alone isn't enough. We need to create that connection, clarity and growth. 
So we should have a feedback loop and treat onboarding as a living process and not just that first day. It's not just that one time event. 
So they're my top nine hiring mistakes as hopefully you can see, they're not just about picking the wrong person, they're about problems in the system that allow mistakes to repeat. So if you take one thing from today, just remember that clarity will give you confidence in the recruitment process. 
This structure will help to reduce bias and connection, will build commitment from our new hires and if you'd like help creating or reviewing your hiring or onboarding processes then we'd love to support you and amplify HR. You can book a discovery call with our team, the links that. 
In the show notes, and if you've received value from this episode, I would love it if you can leave a rating or a review over Apple Podcasts or Spotify says someone else can find the episodes to help with their business. Episodes are released on Mondays, so click subscribe and you'll be notified of when it's available. 
Thanks so much for joining me. If you have any feedback, questions or ideas of future episodes, head on over to amplifyhr.com.au or connect with me on LinkedIn and we can start a conversation.