Hiring should move your business forward, not leave you spinning your wheels. If you’re constantly finding yourself reposting jobs, dealing with high turnover, or struggling with team chemistry, you might be making some all-too-common hiring mistakes.
The good news? These missteps are fixable. It’s going to take a little honesty, some self-awareness, and a willingness to overhaul how you approach recruiting. Here’s what’s holding your hiring process back, and how to get it right.
What you’ll learn:
Think of your job ad like a dating profile. It’s the first impression you’re giving to potential matches. If you’re misleading about who you are or what you’re looking for, you’ll attract the wrong people (or worse, no one at all).
One of the most common hiring mistakes employers make is creating vague or misleading job titles. You might think calling a role, “Growth Ninja” or “Customer Experience Rockstar” sounds cool. Candidates searching for “Marketing Manager” or “Client Success Specialist” won’t even see it. You’ve effectively ghosted qualified people before they had the chance to apply.
Beyond the title, if the posting is full of clichés and buzzwords or reads like it was pulled from a 2010 HR textbook, you’re not doing yourself any favors. A strong job post should be clear, realistic, and honest. Never use a job description as a job posting. One is a dry HR tool (job descriptions) and one is an attractive marketing tool (job postings) and should be written as such.
Be brief but give the candidate enough information to self-select into or out of your process. If your pay is on the low side, post the range. Why waste the candidate’s time and yours? What’s the actual day-to-day work like? What are the hours, the team structure, the performance expectations?
Vagueness is not a winning strategy.
Here are quick fixes we recommend:
Let’s say you made it past the job posting hurdle and now you’re sitting across from (or on Zoom with) a seemingly great candidate. Three months after hiring them, they’re not working out. Sound familiar?
A big reason interviews don’t do their job is that most companies run them like casual conversations rather than structured assessments. You’re chatting, asking surface-level questions, and walking away thinking, “They seem nice” and they might be, but “seeming nice”, isn’t a performance metric.
Relying on intuition or gut feelings in interviews is risky. People are wired to like others who are like them (appropriately called “like-me bias”), and that bias can make us ignore red flags or overestimate someone’s capabilities. Having a consistent, structured, objective, criteria-based approach will serve you better.
Here is a more effective approach:
If you want to avoid common hiring misfires, you need more than a good feeling, you need to evaluate real skills, real behavior, and real job fit. That’s how you start hiring with clarity.
“Cultural fit” gets thrown around a lot. Sometimes it’s used as a way to reject people for vague, unhelpful reasons (“they just weren’t a fit”). When approached thoughtfully, culture fit can be the difference between a thriving team and constant conflict.
Hiring someone who checks all the boxes on paper but can’t work well with your team is like adding the wrong ingredient to a recipe. Everything else can be perfect, but it still won’t turn out right.
Consider how your team communicates, makes decisions, and receives feedback. Do you value fast execution over consensus-building? Transparency over hierarchy? Quiet focus over constant collaboration? These factors all make a difference as to who would work well in your team, and who might not be quite right.
For remote teams, cultural fit becomes even more important. Without hallway chats and quick desk-side check-ins, communication gaps widen fast.
Reference checks aren’t glamorous, but ignoring them isn’t a winning strategy. Reference checks can reveal patterns, such as whether a candidate left on good terms, how they handled pressure, or how they interacted with colleagues. It doesn’t have to be a red flag hunt (although red flags pop up often); it can provide valuable information and reinforce your decision.
Make sure you control which contacts are provided by the candidates. Don’t allow personal references from friends or neighbors, and notice if the candidate skips certain employers. Require the last seven consecutive years or the last four employers, whichever is less, and direct managers only. Match the list to the resume. We are wary of candidates who can’t “find” their former managers or can’t/won’t provide references as requested.
The same goes for background screening. If the role involves sensitive data, financial responsibility, or client interaction, verify the candidate’s background.
If your hiring process looks different every time you need to fill a role, you’re probably winging it more than you should and undermining the quality of your hires. Good hiring means having a concrete, repeatable process that feels familiar each time you run through it.
Build a system that works, then refine it as you go. A few key pieces to get right:
Hiring well is one of the highest-leverage things you can do as a business owner or manager. A single great hire can transform your team. A bad one will cost you not just in money, but also time and momentum.
At Next Level Strategies, we know that hiring well requires clarity, structure, and intentional decisions, not just luck. Avoiding common hiring mistakes, like unclear job postings or relying too much on gut instinct, starts with accurate postings, clear titles, and a proven process. That’s how you set your team up for long-term success.
If your hiring approach could use a refresh—or you’re unsure where to start—we’re here to help. Schedule a free consultation with our team to explore how we can strengthen your process and help you build a team that’s aligned, capable, and ready to grow. Reach out using the form below or call us at 415-876-NEXT.
Reach out to our team of HR experts today!
Relying on vague job descriptions, ineffective interviews, and gut instinct are some of the most common missteps.
They can start by using accurate job titles, structured interviews, and clear criteria for evaluating candidates.
Bad hires can lower team morale, hurt productivity, and cost up to 30% of the employee’s first-year salary.
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