Thanks to the increasing use of SAP software across the globe and the deadline to migrate to S/4HANA looming, SAP candidates are more in demand than ever. Great news for SAP professionals, but not so much for Vice Presidents. 

The competition for winning the best SAP talent on the market is only set to get hotter. Make the wrong move during the interview or job offer process, and that candidate you’ve spent months searching for can slip right through your fingers. Even worse, that person you did hire could leave sooner than you’d hoped, causing a disruption to your team and wasting away your budget. Not a good route to SAP project success.  

So, how do you avoid making a hiring blunder when building out your SAP team? It’s all about knowing what the most common hiring mistakes are and how to avoid them. 

To make sure you set yourself up for SAP hiring success, we’ve compiled a list of the most common hiring mistakes we see VPs make when it comes to SAP candidates, so you can avoid them and level up your talent strategy. 

Your secret to SAP recruitment success: Avoid these 6 hiring mistakes!

According to CVVIZ, 67% of US workers said their candidate experience can make or break their choice to take the job offer or not. 

Another study by LinkedIn showed that 78% of candidates think the experience they receive indicates how a company values its people.

So it’s incredibly important to the SAP hiring process right from applications to job offers by avoiding these 6 common mistakes. 

SAP hiring mistake #1: Vendor Overload

You might think, “the more recruitment firms I hire to source SAP talent, the better.” Unfortunately, you’re sorely mistaken. Sure, you might get more SAP candidate options in your inbox. 

But the reality is that multiple same recruiters will end up targeting the same SAP candidates, and things can get ugly. With such a small talent pool, recruiters might sabotage candidates by promising unrealistic compensation to create Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD)

To avoid this hiring mistake, keep it simple and work exclusively with one recruitment firm, especially a firm who specializes in SAP talent. 

SAP hiring mistake #2: Lengthy process

The longer it takes you to extend a job offer after the interview stage, the more likely you are to lose your ideal candidate to another offer. 

We’ve seen this happening often, with some clients waiting over a month to extend a job offer, allowing their top candidates to get snatched up by another (faster) company. 

A massive 65% of employers worldwide said they missed out on the candidate they wanted because the hiring process took too long. So don’t be like them. Avoid this common hiring mistake by streamlining your interviewing process and not sitting on your offer. 

SAP hiring mistake #3: Unrealistic expectations

While you might be slowing your hiring process to compensate for recessionary pressures, that does not mean that SAP hiring is dipping across the board. 

So far, SAP recruitment has shown an impressive immunity to recession challenges, so your expectations should reflect that.

Contrary to what many VPs assume, SAP talent is not any easier to hire than it was a few months ago. So to avoid this SAP hiring mistake and get the best talent on board, try to relax your requirements.

SAP hiring mistake #4: Going cheap

With the 2027 S/4HANA deadline fast approaching, demand for SAP talent isn’t going to slow down anytime soon. Yet many clients make the hiring mistake of letting recession fears overtake their hiring process and miss out on vital SAP talent as a result. 

To avoid this hiring mistake, look at the recession not as a threat to your organization, but as an opportunity to grab hold of the best SAP talent while your competitors partake in a hiring freeze. 

Want more SAP recruitment tips? Read our previous blog to see why reducing your SAP talent budget is a massive hiring mistake.

SAP hiring mistake #5: Culture clash

According to Teamstage, 86% of candidates avoid organizations that have a poor reputation, and 46% of candidates say that company culture is important to them during the interview process. That’s why hiring someone who clashes with your culture is a big mistake when it comes to SAP recruitment. 

Hiring a candidate with a conflicting culture often leads to fast resignations, as they won’t feel as though they fit in or share the same values. All that time and money you spend on hiring the perfect candidate will be for nothing. 

To avoid hiring the wrong candidate, make sure you work with a specialist recruiter who takes the time to understand your company’s unique culture in order to match you with your ideal candidate. 

SAP hiring mistake #6: Job inflexibility

Now that we’ve emerged from the worst of the pandemic, it’s very clear that remote work is here to stay. However, some VPs still aren’t willing to offer flexible working arrangements to their desired candidates, often losing them to a competitor based on this single factor. 

We recently surveyed hundreds of SAP consultants about their workplace preference.  51% would like to work remotely 100% of the time. 26% would like to work 3 days a week remotely. So, make sure you’re willing to let your new hires work 100% remotely, if not 100% of the time then at least with a hybrid approach.    rather than requiring them to be onsite or follow a hybrid work model. 

In this day and age, having a fully remote work option isn’t just competitive, it’s expected. And if you don’t offer remote work to your ideal candidates, someone else will. 

But you don't have to make that choice alone. Talk to RED Global.

When it comes to hiring SAP talent, you must do everything in your power to stay competitive, avoid common hiring pitfalls, and offer your candidates the best experience possible. 

With SAP consultants in such high demand, you can’t afford to let competitors steal all the good ones because you took forever to put a job offer forward or didn’t take the time to assess cultural compatibility. 

If you’re struggling to hire exceptional SAP talent on your own, and need a specialist SAP recruitment consultancy to take the reins, talk to RED Global. 

With our exclusive SAP and tech talent network, data-backed expertise, and incredible support, when you partner with RED, you’ll talk to recruitment consultants who know SAP better than anyone else. 

Book a strategy call with our dedicated team at RED Global today.