Right? or Right for now?
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(The alternative title for this is Mr Right/Mr Right for now, but that’s got a whole lot of baggage I’d have to unpack then repack, or maybe I’m being too cautious…)
Every workplace has one, if not two, if not many. Employees who are just wrong- wrong skills, wrong attitude, just wrong, just a round peg in a square hole. This isn’t blaming them (although often they deserve some), but recognizing this is not a workable relationship. Sometimes a relationship, whether work, friendship, familial, or romantic, just isn’t working for either party. But it always begs the question- how did we get here? How was it before, and what went wrong?
There are no right answers below, only a lot of questions. But these are important questions, because you will make bad hiring decisions- it will happen. These are just good questions for your self-reflection.
At some stage they were chosen. Were you wrong that they were Right?
This the core question; at some stage someone said- that person, hire them, pick them. That’s our guy, offer him the role. The question is whether this was a terrible estimation? I discuss this elsewhere, but to quickly summarise- recruitment is an estimation, an educated guess. There are no perfect tools for assessing, only a means to provide as accurate a gamble as possible. The question to ask is; was your estimation wrong? Did you think they were going to be perfect but completely mis-estimated?
Did you miss some signs?
There are two reasons you may have missed information when approximating the likelihood of their success. First, you didn’t gather enough information, or the right information. This could be an over-reliance on some selection tools, or lack of utilisation of others. To give a common example- plenty of people can fake good interviews, but there were plenty of warning signs in their references.
Alternatively, you may not have sufficiently weighted the negatives you found. This is surprisingly hard to avoid- the human brain is prone to a number of cognitive biases here, look up the Halo effect and confirmation bias as applicable examples.
Did you take a gamble that didn’t pay off?
Alternatively, you knew the risk you were taking. The signs were there, and you saw them. You may have weighed them accordingly, but decided to take a risk. If so, don’t beat yourself up; everything is a risk to some extent. Don’t worry about the risk you knew you were taking, just the risks you didn’t know you were taking.
If you’re going to analyze these decisions, I would recommend considering whether you over-estimated your capacity to do a better job than the last employer or manager. A good example of this is the disgruntled interviewee; the one who complains about their last workplace, begging the question- if they are so disgruntled there, will they be disgruntled here? Maybe, and maybe you take the gamble that you’re better employer than their last one, which may prove to be an over-estimation of you, and/or an under-estimation of the last workplace.
Were they - Right for now?
Some employees were bad hires. Some employees weren’t the right person, but the best we could find from the applicants we had. Sometimes we know they aren’t, or are unlikely to be a good hire, but they are best candidate. But best doesn’t mean good if it’s a bad bunch. The core question here is similar to above- was this a correctly appraised estimation of potential success, or an inaccurate?
Could we wait?
The biggest driver for taking a risk is that we can’t afford to wait for the perfect candidate. When I’m recruiting and struggling to find the perfect candidate, I do occasionally have to point out to the hiring manager that I can’t ‘make’ people, we can only find people who do, or do not exist. The counter to that is taking your time, surveying all of your options, and picking the best, sometimes we settle too early, sometimes we wait too long for the best option to come along.
Alternatively, maybe you didn’t look hard enough. Did you just run a standard process; job ad, screen candidates, interview three, hire one. Maybe this wasn’t the best option, maybe they were the best found, but that doesn’t mean they were good enough.
The relationship went toxic
Finally, maybe it wasn’t a bad hire. Maybe they were fine, or could have been fine. Maybe it was their induction, their training, their first impressions, or subsequent issues in the business that made them fall out of love with the business. Maybe slowly things got worse. This happens.
The question here is; were they fine for a period of time? How long was that time? Because if for a good period of time they were performing employee, then it’s not a recruitment gap, but a management and engagement gap.
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