Idea in Brief
The Problem
Employers continue to hire at a high rate and spend enormous sums to do it. But they don’t know whether their approaches are effective at finding and selecting good candidates.
The Root Causes
Businesses focus on external candidates and don’t track the results of their approaches. They often use outside vendors and high-tech tools that are unproven and have inherent flaws.
The Solution
Return to filling most positions by promoting from within. Measure the results produced by vendors and new tools, and be on the lookout for discrimination and privacy violations.
Businesses have never done as much hiring as they do today. They’ve never spent as much money doing it. And they’ve never done a worse job of it.
A version of this article appeared in the May–June 2019 issue of Harvard Business Review.
