Hiring the Wrong Person - I Learn Not to Break My Own Process

Hiring the Wrong Person - I Learn Not to Break My Own Process

- Lessons Learned, Episode 49

Over time, we developed a good hiring process that works for us. Because of my background (see previous Lessons Learned episodes), I am a big believer in the “Hire slow, Fire fast” mentality. And, like most small businesses, I’m reluctant to get to that firing part. But I’m very good at hiring slow.

Except when I break my own rules.

Without going into all the details, here’s an overview of our hiring process (for details, see the links below):

• Have a good, detailed job description on file.
• Write a good, detail job ad that includes some elements that result in candidates eliminating themselves.
• Hold a very brief phone interview with owner (me) or service manager. Just enough to get a sense that there are no red flags.
• Pick a day and have the candidate be interviewed by the owner, their prospective manager, any techs in the office (as a group). Each person who interviews will have an evaluation form to fill out.
• Go to lunch with prospect and all employees who are in the office.
• Give the prospect a bit of homework.
• Compare scores. Discuss differences in evaluations.
• If prospect looks like a real prospective employee, have them take a DISC profile.
• Do background checks.
• Make offer and set first day of work.

YOU don’t have to have that detailed of a process, but here’s what I learned: When we used this process and the candidate was interviewed by at least three people, we never had a bad hire (someone who didn’t work out or ended up quitting).

This process worked when we moved from five people to six, ten, and fifteen. And some version of it has worked with smaller companies I’ve owned and larger companies I’ve coached. It’s a good process. It’s not cheap and it’s not fast. And those are two reasons it works.

One of my absolutely unbreakable rules is, 

You can’t control people but you can control your processes.

I learned that the hard way – twice – when it came to hiring. On two very different occasions, I hired someone without going through this process. In both cases, I simply said I’m the boss, it’s my company, and I’m doing this.

Side note: If you ever find yourself saying "I’m the boss, it’s my company, and I’m doing this," someone on your staff must be authorized to punch you in the face. Such decisions are almost never good for the long-term health of the company. 

Time One: The greatest go-getter I ever met.

I used to go to a local retailer with a small shop and a large number of employees. Time and time again, one woman was always “the person” who got things done. Everyone in any job went to her for direction even though she wasn’t a supervisor. She handled phones, walk-in customers, and employee questions fast and efficiently. And in all that crazy busy activity, I always felt that I got truly great customer service.

Well, after eight years, my office manager left to go help her husband run his new business. So I started looking for an office manager and going through our process. Then I went into the shop where Maria worked. I’d always thought she was an amazing employee, so I asked her to come take a look at our company and see if she liked it.

I took her around the office, introduced her to everyone, and then offered her the job. No interviews. No resumes. No side-check by my staff. My service manager asked me if I was sure about such a rash decision, and all I said was, “Wait til you see her in action.”

Well . . . Maria was happy to have a bump in pay, but she was completely out of her element. She could do most of what we needed, and she could learn the rest. But she didn’t love technology. And even though her job was to be the office manager, she felt like a fish out of water when everyone else in the company loved technology.

She looked like a great manager from my perspective as a customer in her old shop. But she had no experience managing administrative assistants, getting out newsletters, or checking to make sure payments and invoices were for the right amounts, etc. 

She tried and we tried, but it was not meant  to be. She just didn't shine in this job as she did in her previous job. I had to let her go. I gave her a much larger severance than normal because I felt guilty for having her leave her old job and now be out looking for another.

As a person who likes people, I felt very bad about the whole thing. And it was 100% my fault. I didn’t follow my very well designed process. 

Time Two: Great technicians may be bad judges of other technicians.

The second time I broke my process was when we needed a higher-level tech. We had a truly great technician on the job. He is probably the second best technician I have ever worked with. But he was leaving, so we wanted to find another really good person to take his place.

The outgoing technician recommended a friend he’d worked with at another job, so we invited the guy (Dave) to apply. He was not really great on paper, but my tech said he was amazing and that we’d be lucky to have him.

So I pushed him through a few pieces of the process and then just hired him. No one was authorized to punch me in the face, so Dave came to work for us.

And he was the single worst employee I ever had. He was skilled but not amazing. He was always late, always sloppy, didn’t work well with clients, and fought both documentation and keeping accurate time on jobs. Eventually, we fired him for emailing some of our intellectual property to a competitor.

I wish I could hire him again just so I could fire him again.

This time, I didn’t feel bad at all about firing him. But once again, it was 100% my fault. I broke my process and I paid the consequences. I won’t go into all the reasons that a bad hire is bad for finances, bad for employee morale, bad for business, and bad for your health. You’ve probably seen what bad employees do inside your companies or others. 

Hiring the wrong person is literally inviting bad news into your company. Good employees can make your company great. Bad employees can take your business down.

When I say Lesson Learned here, I assure you: I will never break my established hiring process again. And if I do, you can punch me in the face!

All comments welcome.

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For details on my processes, see:

https://blog.smallbizthoughts.com/2011/11/sop-friday-hiring-process.html

https://blog.smallbizthoughts.com/2017/04/job-posts-that-screen-themselves.html

https://blog.smallbizthoughts.com/2008/04/hiring-best-employee.html

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Episode 49

This Episode is part of the ongoing Lessons Learned series. For all the information, and an index of Lessons Learned episodes, go to the Lessons Learned Page. 

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