Do you ever worry about making a bad hire?

What is a Bad Hire

A bad hire is the great fear of many managers because;

• It is embarrassing. Everyone knows when you make a bad hire, everyone feels it.
• It is expensive as you have to work 10 times harder to get them to carry out their goals, they are very slow to pick the work. You have to let them go and rehire.
•  It is time-consuming. You just went through hundreds of resumes and spent much  too time getting this staff, and now you have to do it again.
• Your boss sees you have gaping weaknesses in a critical area (or worse your staff now knows you have flaws)
•  You are just not interested in going through the hassle of trying to get them to work out and then having to fire them.

There is more but I know you get the picture.

Anyone who has been in a position of hiring and firing has a horror story to tell about a bad selection. I sure do.

What makes for a bad hire?

• They just don’t show up like the person you interviewed did. They sent their evil twin.
• You have to repeatedly explain to them how to do things you thought they should know by now. You are actually concerned they can’t write as they don’t seem to know how to make notes for reminders.
• Not accountable – doesn’t take personal accountability for the expectations placed on them. They are the “Teflon person” that never lets anything stick to them.  You will hear them saying “It’s not my fault, or I wasn’t trained properly”
• They are unreliable – they have too many moods and attitudes.  Their personal ebbs and flows make for frustration for co-workers and managers.
• They can’t seem to grasp some key components of the job they are expected to do, and they are not demonstrating a personal ability to solve these issues.
• Not intellectually curious to new processes and ways to improving their performance. ( The tell me how to do this instead of what to do, and I will figure out the best way to do it)

I would be remiss in my thoughts on hiring if I didn’t remind you about being a “bad boss.”

Sometimes managers (bosses, supervisors, team leads, etc.) do not give employees the information they need to do the job. Often they throw new employees into a chaotic mess and expect them to rise to the surface.  That is all fair game, if and only if you hire the right person for this type of situation. If you hire a person who requires predictability, order and clear processes into a start-up where survival is the key,  you have become a bad boss. I say this because you have not taken responsibility for putting the right person in the right job at the right time.

If you are the type of person who wants someone who can hit the ground running there are some key questions you can ask them to find out if they have ever done that before, or if they even know what that looks like.

Each environment, aka company culture is unique and requires a solid understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of that difference.

Each hire is an opportunity to move your team or company in a clear direction.

I am going to ask some questions of you to help you understand if you are a boss in need of help.

1. Do you know you are not good at hiring?
2. Have you made some expensive mistakes in the past?
3. Do you rush through the selection process because you don’t have time or you just hate doing this?
4. You hire people on your “gut feelings”.
5. Have you had difficulty working with a recruiter?
6. Do you wish there was just a system that you can carry out to make each hire less of a gamble?

If you have answered yes to any of these questions, read on.

I am writing a series of articles on “Hiring without Headaches” for those of you who would like to master the art of hiring or to simply tweak the skills you have to improve your success rate.

I have broken down this process into a series of easy to implement steps that will help you organize your thinking which will result in a great hire.

1. Understand what you need in the position. I will give you some questions to help you work through this. It is important to remember that the critical skills (often called soft skills) are as important if not more important than technical skills.

• What are the technical skills you need for this position?
• What are the interpersonal capabilities you need i.e. Work within a diverse team, work with little direction, work with few policies and procedures, ability to create policies and procedures, just to name a few considerations
• What are you missing in your current team? This is a great opportunity to fill in any gaps. Using DISC or other team assessment tools is really helpful to decide what temperament and behavioural preferences would be a real asset.
• Are there opportunities for growth in this position or within the company?

Look down the road to see what skills you will need in 3, 6 or 9 months. Think about  the skills you  will likely need and keep this in your back pocket as you might find a “diamond in the rough” that will fill a role down the road.This is a great time to start your succession funnel or skills bench. Make every hire a strategic hire!

2. The next series of questions are about the person themselves. Workplaces are like blended families. As a former family therapist I find this analogy a very useful way to view your work colleagues. When you think about it you often spend as much, if not more time with your work associates than you do with your family and the opportunity for challenges, conflicts, synergy and innovation is present several times each day. If you introduce new members to your work family that have nothing in common with them it is hard to get to the synergy and innovation part of the team equation.

• What does the applicant want from the job? Is this a stopover, a stepping stone, necessary experience, a good place to start, a place to make their mark on their chosen field,  or a place to unleash their creativity?
• What kind of experience have they had previously? Have they been successful? Have they failed? What learning and behaviour change have they used in both their successes and failures? This process called “learning agility” has been the focus of many of my previous blogs and will continue to be a favourite going forward. I believe learning agility holds the “keys to the hiring kingdom”.
• What is their view of their experiences? Are they actually thinking about it in a planful way or are they just going from experience to experience without much thought.

3. Getting what you need. It is time to put your good thinking and analysis to a plan.

• You know what you need
• You know who you need
• What are the:
  • Must haves
  • Good to have
  • Would be good going forward
• How to find this? Remember to document your good work in the earlier stages of this process  so you can articulate exactly what you want and what you need, regardless of how you get a list of candidates.
• Ways to get candidates for this process.
  • Employee referral
  • Employment Agency
  • Job Board on your web site
  • Ad in social media (Linked in, Facebook or Twitter) or more traditional media

4. Let the selection begin. There are many great ways to select a total gem in a sea of sparkly stones. Always have 2 people involved. There are lots of great reasons to share this responsibility but the foremost one is to make sure you don’t have biases interfere with the process.

• Assessment tools are a good foundational part to selection criteria but never make a selection on the outcome of an assessment. There are lots of reasons why and some of them are legal. If you get what I mean.
• Having a good set of questions. ( that is another whole article) Make sure your questions get at what you are looking for. Make sure each question has a purpose and will answer one of the questions you have identified in the what and who you need section.
• Look for red flags in the hiring process. I was in an interview where the candidate actually responded to a text message from his girlfriend.  Being late unless there is a really good reason, not listening to the question carefully, not answering the question and going off in tangents that are just noise and no content. These are just a few thoughts.
• Respect clarity. If the candidate is not clear on something discussed, watch closely how they get clarity. This will tell you about how they think, courage to ask questions and their ability to communicate in a relationship where they have no influence.

Think about having the candidate show their skills prior to the interview. These are just some basic examples. Be as creative as you can.

• Have them do a presentation (sales, marketing, training session etc)
• Have them do a customer service mock call with you on the line
• Have them assess a current process you have to see how they think
• Set up a series of issues that they would be required to solve

Here we are at the end of our planning phase of recruiting and selecting. Your time is well spent planning your hiring criteria and how to get what you need both at a skills and temperament level. If you would like to have this process done with you or to have you or your staff trained to master the art of recruiting contact Judy Mackenzie, TEVO Consulting at judy@tevoconsulting.ca or call at 604-922-3358.

I can offer you and your staff with mastery training or a  “Done for You” program that you can use the processes and systems as a base for your hiring program.

“A company should limit its growth on its ability to attract enough of the right people”

Jim Collins – Good to Great

As a bonus I am offering an hour consultation on your hiring practices. You can call Judy at 778-996-9334 or email at judy@tevoconsulting.ca to set up an appointment.

Also if you are interested in looking at the template that I have created to estimate what your hiring has cost you this year, email me at [1]judy@tevoconsulting.ca and I will gladly send you a word template to help you with this.

We most often hire for technical skills and fire for interpersonal skills (or lack of them).

Read more about Systems.

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