Hiring and firing, fast and slow
I’m generally a proponent of the “hire slow, fire fast” school of thought. It can be extremely painful to hire slow, but typically not quite as painful as the destruction a bad hire can wreak on a company or team. I recently read Dick Costolo’s (of Feedburner) post on hiring fast vs. slow and I really like what he has to say (sub’d!). He notes that positions where it’s tougher to measure success are the good candidates for hiring slow and firing fast, but that positions where success is (relatively) easier to quantify (ie, sales roles) he’s a proponent of hiring fast and firing fast. Basically because it can be tough to dial in the right person for the product/channel/environment mix before you see their actual results.
What’s interesting is that there’s no “fire slow” school of thought. It’s either hire slow or hire fast, but always fire fast. A bad hire, regardless of how fast you filled the requisition, is always a bad hire and can ruin a culture, company or team. Hire the experience and/or the “best available athlete” that you need, but don’t walk away. Monitor, evaluate and communicate progress and levels of satisfaction. And fire fast when needed.
Anytime HR gets involved, it’s “fire slow”.
Brendon -
Good post. There’s no desire to fire slow, never had that as a request as a HR leader. Most companies are going to have some type of progressive discipline process, which means at least two sit-downs with the employee to advise them they aren’t meeting the objectives of the position.
That being said, the biggest slow down effect I see as a HR person is that managers generally don’t want to deal with the conflict of sitting down with the person to advise them of the gaps between expected and actual performance. Instead, most managers want to wait until they have had 3 months of performance below spec and fire in the first conversation they have had with the person.
So to fire fast and get through corp red tape, it takes a manager not afraid to confront the issue and have quick advisory conversations followed by a 2-3 week measurement period and another conversatoin if needed.
The ultimate “get out of jail” free card is a probationary period of the first 90 days, which allows the company to walk away if it is not working out in “at-will” states, but it to is often not used by a lot of managers who miss in the hiring process.
Fact is, that employers wonder what happened to company loyalty. They’re surprised when an employee gets his pay check on Friday and resigns as soon as it’s in his or her hand. Being fired ruins an individuals self worth and cripples chances of obtaining a better job down the road.
I’ve never been fired or laid off in my life. However, I have learned to sense the fickle finger of fait before it can pull the trigger on me and my family. Yes, I said family. You know, that group of people the depend on you for an income.
How is it that corporate big shots are always surprised when some fired or laid off employee walks in with a shotgun? You’re not just letting go of a performance issue, you’re throwing a family under a bus.
I’ve been on the corporate side of having to let someone go and I truly believe it cost me more sleep than it did the person I had to can. What I hate is that there are so many folks in management positions that get a high out of the power to do such things.
@Mark…sometimes it feels that way, for sure.
@Kris…great point about probationary periods. That’s saved me a couple of times, for sure.
@Greg….not sure I agree about employers wondering about company loyalty. At least not any employer large enough to have a dedicated HR person. People jump around in jobs these days. 30 years at the same org is a rarity. Good points about the human side of firing–it’s never easy, and it’s definitely not fun. With appropriate policies and communication, though, it shouldn’t be a surprise either.
Menlo Innovations (an IT company in Michigan) found a way to hire slowly – but do it quickly. They call it eXtreme Interviewing:
http://www.menloinnovations.com/freestuff/whitepapers/extremeinterviewing.htm
I’m reading this and feeling like being at one of those dinner party conversations where there are two alpha males debating an either or proposition. This conversation seems to take little or no account of the possibilities of someone improving. Where is the reference to young people who may need counselling and mentoring? I relate absolutely to Kris’ comments about the negligence (often sheer gutlessness) of managers who won’t put the effort in to counsel and help people, taking the “easy” route of setting them up for failure and their families for distress, as Greg points out so well. In my book, being a manager, getting more money and the car says you have an obligation to help and support, not just to show how tough you are.
I really could have phrased that better. My comment about the dinner party context was a clumsy attempt to describe how I feel when discussion comes up on this hiring/firing issue – that the subject is worthy of being more nuanced than usually (in my experience) occurs. I was not intending any slight on anyone here, including the esteemed author of the blog! It is an important discussion, especially as we enter, in the developed world at least, what recruiters are now calling the “war for talent”. From what I’ve learned in recent times listening to top headhunters, it will be even more important to get the recruiting decisions right and also – my view – not to be too quick to fire, lest the person you thought was out there waiting to fill the position may not be there after all.
Couple of other thoughts from the HR side of the house…
Comments about setting the right expectations for new employees are right on track. My comments on the firing side are really only for the individuals that you have “missed” on in the hiring process…
To some the points included, every manager needs to set objectives for all new employees, then do a “check-in” from a performance standpoint every couple of weeks initially, then probably once a month when they are in the groove. With this type of coaching, many of the terms could be avoided, but coaching skills among managers from a performance management standpoint are weak – it’s another form of confrontation, which most humans try to avoid…..
The dialogue is good, the topic is complex….
No doubt about it Kris. It’s a case of being afraid of confrontation. No one likes delivering bad news or having to correct the actions of another. Yet, if you have an employee who is chomping at the bit to jump into management, their capability to handle coaching and mentoring should be judged first.
In many instances, when it comes to correction subordinates behavior or performance it’s a simple matter. “It’s not what you say, but how you say it.” Napolean Hill was onto something for sure.
I’m not surprised that (as you write) “there’s no ‘fire slow’ school of thought.”
I am surprised that there is not “get to the root cause” school of thought. And even more surprised that so many leadership writers don’t write about the root causes and the fixes.
If a manufacturing company finds defective output they repair it or trash it. And when they find it more than once they don’t buy a bigger dumpster. They find the root causes and they eliminate it.
Firing is a signal there may be serious quality control issues in the hiring and/or the leading. Unless you ask why (and get to the root) you are sweeping the real problem under the rug.
I think in the “fire fast” school of thought (of which I’m a fan, too) is the inherent understanding that we have done our jobs as managers and shown in a black-and-white, unconfusing way what exactly we expect from our workers.
I’ve fired a number of folks in my time and not one of them was surprised. Unhappy, maybe, but not surprised.
What is so hard about sitting down with an employee and saying, “This, specifically, is what I expect from you and this is how I’ll know whether you’ve done it or not.”?
Dan
I’m working with a company where turnover in one job category costs $70,000 per person. They have hired and lost 11 of those people in the last 24 months. And each of the hiring and leadership executives had an “inherent understanding” that they had done “their jobs” and the turnover was unavoidable. They showed me the lengthly job descriptions, they recounted the hours spent interviewing, and told tales of super leadership efforts.
But the numbers ($770,000) said “look deeper.” So we did.
With regards to “higher slow”, we have to address something immediately — the fear of making a hiring mistake.
Hiring is something I speak to fellow managers and directors about repeatedly. It is way too easy in this age to moan that nobody is qualified, education is bad, that all the good people are already taken. And so, the employment industry gets fixated on the “passive candidate.” Hiring one can take forever, especially when many (active and passive) want to gain new skills, improve their marketability in new fields.
It’s interesting that in our world of ever shortening product cycles, we demand that managers and workers must produce results immediately. If we’re not fast, our competitors grab more market share. Why then is hiring treated differently? Isn’t hiring fast a competitive advantage too, to hire capable people before your rivals? Why don’t more managers develop that skill?
In talking to today’s managers, I’ve noticed a common sentiment. It isn’t clearly stated in many cases, in fact it’s rare the manager who sees himself as a bottleneck in the hiring process. It takes some prying for a manager to finally lay out why hiring is taking so long. Many are obsessed with “proven track records”, “results” and the like. They look for “experience” when what they really need to look for is “potential.” This is especially true in a world where yesterday’s rules and markets constantly change.
The reality is not every manager studies what entails job competence. (While a little more challenging in a knowledge economy, it’s not impossible.) The faulty reasoning is if you like succeeded somewhere else, then you’ll likely succeed here too. (Never mind that we’re trying to do something that’s never been done before, and we too are creating it as we go along.)
When you look at how a lot of hiring is done today, the focus is on “what have you done.” That’s wrong. To hire someone, especially fast, you must ask “what can you do.”
When I’ve cornered some managers why so much emphasis on “what have you done,” some frank reality comes out. They want someone who’s already done it, who’s worked for the “right” companies, who’s put out famous products, who has the credentials. That way, if the new hire doesn’t work out, they can go back to their boss and say “at least they looked and sounded good on paper and interviews.”
Unfortunately, employers don’t track which hires were rejected who actually turned out good/great elsewhere. If we did, you’d see hiring accelerate. Meanwhile, you can adopt the “what you can do” approach.
When I hire somebody, I can’t spend time going over what they did for somebody else. I want them to contribute to my firm and my bottom line in the present. Reading resumes and conducting faulty behavioral interviews doesn’t reveal what you can do for me under today’s and tomorrow’s conditions. Giving you opportunities to express via “oral and written communications” of how you will do the job does.
Seeing what people can do today in a world where information about anything is readily available kills the “want a job, get experience/want experience, get a job” conundrum — FAST!