The Hidden Expensive Hire — Don’t Make This Mistake

Recruiting during the pandemic and economic downturn has led to some interesting observations with how companies are hiring. One trend I see recently is companies’ low balling candidates on offers.

I’m not seeing hiring freezes, I’m seeing hiring managers making poor hiring decisions.

Expensive hires are masked as cheap hires. Many hiring managers think they can offer a person without a job, a lower salary than they were making before because the candidate is desperate or out of work.

Special example: Barry the software engineer was making $95K at his last job but was laid off because of COVID-19. The hiring manager budgeted $100K for the position but sees an opportunity to save money and offers Barry $85K for their software engineer position. They save $10K and everyone is happy except for Barry.

This gets expensive because Barry starts off feeling like he was low balled and is now untrustworthy of the new company. They will leave your company soon when they find a different job that will pay them what they are worth. Like $100K or more. I know this because they end up talking to me about their pay situation and ask for my help in finding them a new job.

If you think you are saving money by not paying someone what they are worth, wait until you have turnover problems and you are not serving your customers because you can’t find anybody to stick around and do the work.

Making bad hiring decisions gets expensive real fast. Find good hires, pay them and they will solve BIG problems.

Originally published at https://ramptalent.com on July 23, 2020.