Hired a dud? What do you do?

Hiring well is a tough gig. Let’s face it, even the best make mistakes. It’s challenging and time consuming. But finally it’s over and the new person starts. But what happens when you realise that you have made a mistake and hired a dud? How long should you take to act?

Hired a dud?

The answer is as fast as you can. For a number of reasons. Nowadays, every team is lean, each contribution valued. Everyone must pull their weight. You simply cannot permit a passengers to occupy a good spot. Not taking action puts extra pressure on the rest of the team and builds resentment towards you and your bad hire.

Too often a manager will prevaricate, dreading the idea of going through the recruitment process again or perhaps vainly hoping that things will improve with time.

Not to mention the fear of looking stupid.

When someone has to go, they have to GO.

When you have to let a new recruit go, remember that the hirer is the only person to blame. You need to take responsibility for your mistake in judgement and act professionally. If you handle the situation poorly, you will have someone out there broadcasting their bad experience and potentially causing your business damage.

Obviously the best way to avoid this sort of situation is not to hire the wrong person in the first place. Duh! But in reality hiring effectively is not something that many business owners are well versed in.  So here are some important tips.

Hiring well comes down to three main things:

• Hire on attitude. Most people focus on qualifications and experience. Whilst these should not be totally discounted, they are only relevant if the person has the right attitude; to work, to learning, to teamwork etc. Education and experience can always be gained, attitude is mostly hard-wired.

• Don’t rely on your gut feel. When it comes to hiring, subjectivity is your enemy. Have a colleague sit-in or conduct their own interview and compare notes. Invest in developing a hiring process that includes some sort of psychometric or  personality testing to help you independently verify the candidates innate degree of fit to the role. Nowadays there are many options available. If you think that spending a few hundred dollars on testing is expensive, just work out the real cost of making a hiring mistake.

• Get good at interviewing. Learn how to cut-through the “puff” that many candidates present.  Thoroughly analyse the role and understand the underlying qualities you need so that you can conduct a revealing interview.  Make sure that the candidates do most of the talking. Familiarise yourself with every aspect of the job and ask open ended questions relative to it. When you hear something that does not fit or you do not like, ask a deeper question. Remember that often candidates will have put far more time into interview preparation than you have. (Just search YouTube for videos on how to beat the interviewer)

It often happens that entrepreneurs have never had the experience of working in a good team, where each member contributes their full share and real synergy results. It’s truly phenomenal.  Getting your hiring practises to a point where you score bullseyes most of the time is a key business growth factor – especially in businesses with small teams.   Are you going to make mistakes? Of course you are. Could you be doing a better job? ……