When you really think about it, there are only two major hiring mistakes that companies make on an ongoing basis.

Measuring candidate quality is something many companies struggle with. But its importance is obvious: It's how you can assess the usefulness of your sourcing channels and of the recruiters involved; if done properly, it's also a way to assess the quality of the candidates hired compared to their subsequent on-the-job performance.

Probably everyone knows this already, but it's worth a reminder. There is one competency that overrides all others combined. I call it the master competency. In fact, during an interview you only need to assess a person for this one single competency to determine if the person is a good fit for the job. To make it even easier, you only need to ask one question to determine if the candidate possesses this trait or not.

Consider this: Based on hundreds of observations, about two-thirds of the time hiring errors can be attributed to one of three major interviewing mistakes. They're all easy to correct. It only takes a few simple steps which anyone can learn and use.

Andrew Grove (author of Only the Paranoid Survive) defines a strategic inflection point as a changing of the rules of the game resulting in a massive shift in the way business is conducted. As an example, consider the impact the PC and the Internet had on changing the way business is done in many different companies and industries. HR/recruiting is now going through its own strategic inflection point.

If you do things better, you'll get a nice raise, a pat on the back, some recognition, maybe even a promotion. If you do better things, you'll become famous.