The Top Mistakes Companies Make in Their Hiring Process—and How to Avoid Them

Hiring in so many industries right now is both more competitive and more flexible than ever. Candidates expect a faster hiring process, clarity, and a seamless experience—they expect to be impressed as much as they aim to impress. Yet many companies still get in their own way.

According to McKinsey research, 44% of organizations grapple with rigid hiring practices that aren’t easily adapted to changing business needs. This is cause for alarm when any awkward hurdle in your hiring process can drive top talent straight into another employer’s inbox.

But rest assured: these are solvable problems. Let’s walk through the most common hiring process mistakes companies make and, more importantly, how to fix them using modern tools, smart strategies, and prioritizing the candidate experience.

Mistake #1: Slow or Disorganized Communication

Back-and-forth emails. Phone tag. Tardiness. Or, worse: radio silence. Candidates today have very little patience for missed connections and unhurried communications.

Why It Happens:

• Disconnected Systems: Perhaps a candidate’s status doesn’t update between stages, or a hiring manager ignores notifications from an unfamiliar system.
• Unclear Internal Roles: Too often, everyone involved in the end-to-end hiring process may feel uncertain of their role, the weight of their opinions, or recruiting best practices.
• Too many decision-makers, not enough decisiveness. A large cohort of interviewers and colleagues who can’t agree can be a significant speed bump.

The Impact:

• Candidate Drop-Off: Talent doesn’t have to sit around waiting to hear back from you in a competitive market; top candidates are available for an average of 10 days before getting hired.
• Damaged Employer Brand: Sites like Glassdoor offer a platform for candidates to post reviews of your interview experience; word can spread fast if they feel they’ve been treated poorly.
• Slower Time-to-Hire: You can’t fill open roles quickly if you aren’t engaging with candidates in an efficient and timely manner.

How to Fix It:

• Automate interview scheduling with tools like an interview scheduler to eliminate back-and-forth emails.
• Set clear internal SLAs for communication and decision timelines. This will benefit your internal colleagues, who are probably eager for guidance, as much as your candidates.
• Assign a single point of contact to keep candidates informed and engaged—and engage frequently, even if updates feel small (or there’s no update at all yet).

Candidates are evaluating your company as much as you’re evaluating them. Ghosting or delays during the various points in the interview stage often result in lost opportunities.

Mistake #2: Unclear Job Descriptions and Expectations

Putting up a new role cannot be a slap-dash exercise meant to kick off a race to an arbitrary finish line. Time-to-hire matters, but so does retention and the time you’ll invest in the recruiting process. Take the time to set a good foundation for the role you’re hiring for.

Why It Happens:

• Rushed Job Postings: Of course, you’re eager to fill open roles, but a frenzied posting process that doesn’t give proper thought to the role description isn’t going to pay off in the long run.
• Copy-Paste JDs from Old Listings: Times change, teams change, and roles change. Don’t assume the last version of a job posting is still the best version.
• Lack of Collaboration Between Recruiting and Hiring Managers: Collaboration can be tricky, especially with new managers or those you don’t work with often.

The Impact:

• Attracting Unqualified or Misaligned Candidates: If you’re consistently getting sub-par applications, it’s likely something’s amiss with your posting.
• More Back-And-Forth During Screening: Clarifying details like responsibilities, location or schedule expectations, and minimum qualifications can be a serious time suck.
• Lower Retention Post-Hire: New hires hate feeling like they haven’t landed the job that was promised to them, and they rarely stick around for it.

How to Fix It:

• Partner with hiring stakeholders to define responsibilities, required skills, and success metrics. Take some time to make the job description just right, add some future-facing language that can help candidates see potential for growth, and consider the current needs and dynamics of the team.
• Use plain language—and don’t forget to highlight what makes your company and team unique. Include details like benefits, a salary range, and things like hybrid arrangements whenever possible.
• Include details on the interview process, timeline, and expectations upfront. Candidates will appreciate your transparency and be better prepared, which benefits everyone.

A clear, compelling job post is your first shot at attracting the right candidates. Make it count.

Mistake #3: No Feedback Loop for Candidates

The candidate experience matters. We know you know it. But candidates don’t know it matters to you unless you show them you care, preferably by inviting their honest feedback.

Why It Happens:

• Overloaded Recruiters: Who has the time to pause and ask, “How am I doing?” and really listen to the answer when one role’s been filled just for another to pop up after it?
• Unclear Process Ownership: Who’s responsible for gathering this feedback? And who’s responsible for escalating and incorporating it with the rest of the organization?
• “Ghosting” Has Become Normalized: Unfortunately, candidates know that recruiters—for whatever reason—tend to go silent if they haven’t moved forward, leaving no room for feedback conversations.

The Impact:

• Negative Glassdoor Reviews: If people can’t talk to you, they’ll take their dissatisfaction somewhere.
• Missed opportunities to re-engage silver-medal candidates. It’s tough to reconnect with a second-place candidate down the road, when a new job opens, if you left them hanging the first time.
• Talent Lost to More Communicative Competitors: Employers who thoughtfully engage with their candidates and treat them with greater respect have a huge leg up in this hiring market.

How to Fix It:

• Create email templates for timely updates so recruiters have a straightforward process to follow, with the heavy lifting already done, throughout the hiring process.
• Set a clear feedback policy internally, who sends it, what it includes, and when.
• Use a video interviewing platform or ATS that offers built-in, automated candidate updates. It’s okay to be busy; the right technology can help fill the gaps.

A simple, timely email can preserve relationships—and your reputation.

Mistake #4: Too Many Interview Rounds

Putting candidates through the wringer again and again may make you feel like you’re getting to know them better, but in reality, you’re probably wearing them down.

Why It Happens:

• Fear of Making the Wrong Hire: High turnover or tough roles might make you feel like you need to have many conversations to find exactly the right fit.
• Consensus-Driven Culture: Companies often invite a lot of people into the interview process, which will inevitably draw the process out.
• Lack of Interviewer Training: Making the most of every interview, without having to pile them on one after another, is a skill that needs to be learned.

The Impact:

• Interview Fatigue: Top candidates don’t have hours and weeks to spend on repeating rounds of interviews.
• Higher Candidate Drop-Off: It’s likely other employers are scooping up top talent before you’re finished screening them.
• Longer Time-to-Fill and more burnout for current team members in the meantime.

How to Fix It:

• Use structured interviews with defined questions and scoring rubrics. Consistency and helpful guides are key.
• Incorporate one-way video interviews (like interview on demand) for early-stage screening. It’s more efficient for everyone involved, and a great way to get things off to a speedy start.
• Empower hiring managers to make confident decisions with fewer touchpoints.

You’re not just evaluating candidates; they’re evaluating your efficiency, too. Too many hoops to jump through, and they’ll simply opt out.

Mistake #5: Ignoring Candidate Experience

Every interaction a candidate has with your company—from the job posting to the final follow-up—shapes how they perceive your brand. A poor experience can turn top talent away before they even reach the interview stage, while a positive, respectful process can leave a lasting impression, whether or not they get the job.

Why It Happens:

• Focus on internal processes over the candidate journey. There’s a lot to juggle in the recruitment process, but fixating only on workflows isn’t the right approach.
• Legacy systems and outdated tools don’t offer the same high-touch, flexible experience that more modern platforms do.
• “It’s just how we’ve always done it” is not a winning motto, but it is a common refrain.

The Impact:

• Reduced Offer Acceptance Rates: Sometimes, even when your candidate sticks around to receive an offer, they are left too burnt out by the recruiting process to accept.
• Reputation Damage: Your employer brand matters, and it suffers if applicants consistently have a poor experience.
• Lost referrals and passive candidates—a potential gold mine of talent—because the people who know your company don’t want to recommend it.

How to Fix It:

• Map out the candidate journey and identify friction points. Where do applicants tend to go silent? What stages take the longest?
• Use mobile-friendly applications, digital interviews, and automated scheduling tools. These flexible options help candidates feel respected and rapidly moved through your process.
• Personalize touchpoints, especially in final rounds and offers. Email templates are a great starting point, but don’t rely on them too heavily, especially once you’re nearing the finish line.

Try to put on your marketing hat: what experience do you want your candidates to walk away remembering?

Mistake #6: Not Using Data to Improve Hiring

If you’re not measuring your outcomes, it’s going to be difficult to meaningfully improve your processes.

Why It Happens:

• Siloed Data and Spreadsheets: Different recruiters hire in different departments, and different departments have different hiring practices. Not a recipe for holistic success.
• Legacy systems without analytics in a world where data is key to keeping up with the competition.
• No clear process for reviewing hiring performance. Touchpoints to calculate time to hire, retention, candidate satisfaction, and more are so important. If they’re not operationalized, it’ll be impossible to get your hands on that data.

The Impact:

• Inability to Pinpoint Bottlenecks: Your team feels the frustration of slow hiring and candidate drop-offs, but no one knows where it’s coming from.
• Wasted Time and Resources: Everyone is busy, and it’s deeply unsatisfying to invest a lot of time for so little reward.
• Poor Quality of Hire: High turnover rates and frequent restarts on hiring can seriously harm morale.

How to Fix It:

• Track key hiring metrics like time to hire, application completion rate, and funnel conversion. This should be easy with a modern recruiting platform that can do the heavy lifting for you.
• Use AI recruiting tools like AI interview summaries to speed up evaluations, facilitate consistent and objective processes, and align stakeholders.
• Optimize your process regularly based on data, not guesswork.

Taking a data-focused approach to evolving your hiring practices can take some adjusting, but give it a chance, and you’ll see: it’ll pay off in spades.

Wrapping It Up: A Smarter, Faster Hiring Process Starts Here

Hiring mistakes are costly, but they’re also fixable. By streamlining communications, prioritizing the candidate experience, and adopting the right technology, you can build a recruitment process that’s faster, more effective, and a lot more competitive.

Ready to upgrade your hiring strategy? Tools like interviewstream’s video interview platform and online interview scheduling software can help you eliminate bottlenecks, improve candidate experience, and get to offer faster.

Audit your current process, look for opportunities to simplify and modernize, and start focusing on what matters most: connecting with the right people.

About The Author

Drew Whitehurst is the Director of Marketing, RevOps, and Product Strategy at interviewstream. He's been with the company since 2014 working in client services and marketing. He is an analytical thinker, coffee enthusiast, and hobbyist at heart.