The act of recruiting a new employee for your company is one of careful assessments. Naturally, you want to make the best candidate decision. You want the team to be improved by someone who is a good fit. This requires you to assess for someone with the skills to fulfill the role and the personality, location, and working style to mesh well with the company culture and the duties expected of them. Choosing the right person is a delicate process. However, there has also been a recent focus on selling the company or job during the recruitment process. The best candidates are worth negotiating with and sometimes it’s necessary to pitch a job to win a good hire. Interviews are a two-way process where both parties are trying to make the best decision. But should hiring managers focus on overselling the job or assessing candidates?

There is more than one downside to overselling a job during the interview process.

  • Reduces Assessment Ability
  • Misrepresents the Job
  • Prevents Candidates from Self-Selecting
  • Costs in Reputation and Re-Hiring Expenses
Interview Advertising Reduces the Ability to Assess Future Success

In the last few years, hiring managers have been asked to multi-task in their hiring process. As employer reputation and the war for talent rose, so too did the importance of persuading candidates to choose the job. Hiring managers were asked to advertise a position at the same time as conducting interviews and trying to choose the right candidate.

Can these two goals coexist? Theoretically, they can. But in practice, a thrice-repeated study printed by the Journal of Management found that hiring managers who focus on job advertising are less able to predict future success. This indicates that selecting the right candidate is an involving task. Indeed, removing your focus from it can reduce your vital decision-making ability.

It’s a good idea to mention the perks of a job and emphasize the best company culture elements. But if you find yourself worried or focused on pushing the job, not choosing a candidate, then your ability to identify the best candidate can be hindered.

Overselling Misrepresents the Job

Overselling a job means pitching it above and beyond the inherent value. Often, overselling a job involves glossing over the downsides, quirks, and difficulties and hyping the perks. The reality of the day-to-day role may be very different from the tale spun in the interview room. In other words, overselling is misrepresenting the job.

Misrepresenting a job is a disservice to the candidate and to the company. Consider the fact that an ideal new hire is someone who likes the quirks and doesn’t mind the downsides and still wants the job. A non-ideal employee is someone who is disappointed by the reality of an oversold role and may take that out on their environment or respond with a lack of engagement.

Role misrepresentation is a bad idea, even if it’s only a slight exaggeration or a small exclusion. It leads candidates to accept roles that may not be a good fit for them, which takes us to the next point.

Role Overselling Prevents Candidates from Self-Selecting In and Out

Interviews are a two-way street. Not only is the business choosing the best candidate, but candidates are also looking for a job that is the best fit. They’re looking for work rituals that suit their style and a company culture that they’ll fit into in addition to a role their skills are qualified for. Many people also have certain requirements (like a medical condition) that they’ll only mention if they think it’s relevant.

Save Time With Self-Select Outs

Self-selection is an important part of the process, one that saves you work, in fact. Everyone who would be ruled out on a technicality or logistics error self-selects out when they have all the facts. Everyone who lives too far away or can’t work with your core technology or needs a kind of healthcare you don’t provide will self-select out, and you don’t have to assess and reject them!

Best Candidates Self-Select In

On the flip-side, candidates who actually like your business quirks will self-select in. Maybe they want the office with the freezing AC by the snack machines. Maybe they would rather use their own devices. Lastly, maybe they like a boss with a pun-based sense of humor. Full disclosure not only helps candidates self-select out, but you also find out who could really be enthusiastic under the real circumstances.

So, glossing over rough details or over-selling the perks of a role is not just risky for good-fit hiring. It also denies candidates the right to pick their next ideal role.

The Cost in Reputation and Re-Hiring Expenses

Once you’ve over-sold a job and hired someone under slightly false pretenses, then what? They discover the reality of the role or, worse, the fine print. Then, they continue with misconceptions until their confusion creates a problem.

When the illusion is broken and glossed-over truth is revealed, what next? The new hire will likely have something to say and they may start making plans for a new job in a more transparent workplace. Whatever was over-sold to win their employment will become a sticking point. Why? Because people ask questions in interviews for a reason, and the answers need to be accurate or they won’t be happy in the role.

Unhappiness and disappointed hires will inevitably lead to a faster turnover which means soon you will be paying re-hiring costs and going through the process all over again. Not to mention the hit to the employer reputation you were hoping to build when negative reviews appear on GlassDoor and other platforms.

Avoid Overselling the Job When Recruiting

There is a fine line between highlighting the best parts of a job and overselling the experience. Honesty is critical in the hiring process for both parties because both are trying to make a best-fit decision. While you should help candidates choose a role that would suit them well, it’s important to represent the whole truth. Thus, you find someone that will truly enjoy the conditions and company culture as they really are.

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