Avoid a mismatch when hiring new employees.

  A mismatch-many an HR manager has dealt with it at some point. Hiring someone who doesn’t deliver the results expected of them. An employee who, upon closer inspection, turns out not to be a good fit for the organization at all. A new colleague who throws in the towel after just a few months. Recruitment has many pitfalls; a less-than-successful hire can happen in the blink of an eye. With all the consequences that entails, because a bad match means a poor investment and an unnecessary waste of money. What should an organization look for when recruiting staff? Is it purely about degrees and experience, or are there other factors that determine whether or not you should bring a new colleague on board?

Mismatch in the Labor Market

Organizations invest a great deal of energy in recruiting and selecting new employees. After all, every company has a strong interest in getting the right person in the right position. Yet this goes wrong surprisingly often. Supply and demand in the labor market often turn out to be completely out of sync. On the supply side, potential candidates often lack the required qualifications. They don’t have enough experience, or they lack the right degree. In other cases, the problem is actually an excess of degrees and experience. In addition, some employees are unable-or barely able-to keep up with developments in the labor market and the changing demands of the job. Moreover, (future) employees often turn out to have very different expectations of an organization. First and foremost, they want to feel comfortable within the company and seek work in an environment that suits their personality. When the reality falls short of what they initially anticipated, they quickly become demotivated and start looking for another employer.

Recruitment pays too little attention to potential

There are also shortcomings on the demand side. Attention to training and personal development is often neglected within many organizations. Recently, the UWV called on the business community to do more to facilitate continuing education and retraining for employees. According to the benefits agency, offering apprenticeships and entry-level jobs should also be a higher priority.

Traditional focus	Modern approach	Impact
Degrees & certificates	Learning Ability & Adaptability	Sustainable employability
Years of experience	Potential & growth mindset	Future-proof talent
Technical Skills	Soft skills & cultural fit	Higher retention
Immediate readiness	Development opportunities	Long-term value

  Companies are facing rapid, successive changes in technology, organizational structure, and ways of working. That is why organizations should pay much more attention to their employees’ potential. They have the right degree and experience, but to what extent are they able to function in a dynamic environment and adapt to change? How can you ensure that every talented employee can not only develop their potential but also advance in their career? Often, however, the focus is on immediately measurable skills-the so-called “hard” job requirements: degrees and experience. By doing so, organizations miss out on opportunities and pay far too little attention to the future.

Skills for the Future

The U.S.-based Institute for the Future has identified a number of skills that employees will need in the near future. Strikingly, knowledge and experience are notably absent from this list. The skills mentioned appear to be primarily focused on talent, personality, and attitude. In summary, it can be said that in future-oriented thinking, the ability to adapt and the willingness to learn new things are more important than the knowledge and experience gained in the past.

Effective selection and greater returns require long-term thinking

Short-term solutions usually prove to be largely unsuccessful. It’s like a soccer club that thinks it can stop a string of poor results by quickly signing a few new players. That’s panic soccer. For many organizations, however, long-term thinking is still hardly a reality. As many as fifty percent of organizations do absolutely nothing in the way of strategic workforce planning. Those who think ahead and ask themselves what talents and skills are needed for the future will recruit new employees in a much more targeted and successful manner. To prevent a mismatch, it’s important to first identify which employees within the organization turn out to be a “good match.” Are these employees performing so well because of “hard” or “soft” factors? In many cases, the conclusion will be that employees who are content and feel completely at home in the organizational culture deliver the highest return on investment.

The True Cost of a Mismatch

A wrong hire costs more than you think. In addition to direct costs such as recruitment expenses and salary, there are numerous hidden costs that add up:

Cost category	Impact	Estimated Costs
Recruitment costs	Advertisements, recruitment agency, HR time	€5,000, €15,000
Onboarding period	Training, mentoring, lower productivity	3-6 months’ salary
Team productivity	Disruption, demotivation, increased workload	20-30% decline
Loss of customers	Errors, poor service, damage to relationships	Unpredictable
Total	Per mismatch	50-200% of annual salary

Recruitment must therefore focus much more on soft skills rather than strict job requirements. Not only must the new colleague be given the space to develop and adapt to changes, but they must also be an ideal “match” for your organization’s culture, motivations, and core values.

hrmforce Recruitment

The hrmforce matching solution was designed by experienced recruiters and psychologists to add value to your recruitment process. The solution is built on a flexible infrastructure so that it integrates without extra steps with your existing processes, workflows, and systems. This allows you to determine for yourself how to utilize the solution. In this way, your experience and knowledge can be combined with the powerful features of our recruitment solution to achieve a best-practice recruitment process and thereby (significantly) reduce the likelihood of a mismatch.