Don't Be The Victim Of A Hiring Mistake
Every employer makes both good and bad hiring decisions. Both are unavoidable. Even the worst hiring system will produce some very good employees on occasion, and the best selection systems will occasionally produce mis-hires, or employees that don’t fit the job they are hired for. No selection process can guarantee that every newly hired employee is the best or even a good match for the job. A good selection process is designed to reduce the probability of hiring the wrong person, regardless of what the person that designed the process says it will do. The problem is not that employers occasionally hire a bad employee. The problem is that once the bad employee is on the job and gives indicators of being a poor performer, the employer avoids terminating the worker promptly. A supervisor once said to me that his reason for not immediately firing a mis-hire was that “there is a 90-day probationary period and he has only been here for 30 days.” The experience then becomes one that lasts far too long. While the employer is wrestling with determining the “right” decision, the better employees in the organization have already made their decision. They begin to either distance themselves from the poor performer, complain, or they start doing the extra work that is now required to assure that their performance is not hurt by the new employee’s poor performance. After the first mis-hire, good employees may wonder what went wrong with the selection process. After additional mis-hires, they will begin to wonder how much longer they will be able to put up with carrying the load for the employee that can’t carry their fair share. The result is that towards the conclusion of the 90-day probationary period the mis-hired employee is terminated. Unfortunately, bad employees do not always leave by themselves. They often (unintentionally) convince more valued employees that there may be a better place to work. Employers and their most valued employees are better served when time is invested in terminating the mis-hire rather than trying to make him or her into the next good employee. When newly hired employees are determined to be “mistakes,” their employment should be terminated, regardless of how much time remains in the probationary period. The chances of hiring a person that is not a good fit for the job decreases when an employer invests quality time in selecting employees, adheres to a policy of not settling for the“best of the bunch,” and terminating mis-hires when it is determined that they are not the right person for the job. ─ Lonnie Harvey, Jr SPHR, President of The JESCLON Group Inc.
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