Making The Hire That Makes The Grade

“I hire smart people and pay them well.  Shouldn’t they know what they are doing and just do it? They're supposed to bring me solutions instead of more problems. I'm already overwhelmed. I hired them to take care of my business—to take some of the load off. This isn’t working.”

                    – Most Second Stage Business Owners

We hear this quite often. And we understand the frustration.

You finally step up to the plate and spend the money to make that key hire, the one you've been putting off. Maybe it's the phenom sales manager known for leading teams to triple-digit gains. The production leader who trained at P&G. The logistics guru you lured away from Amazon. Whatever the particular role, this was the big one: the functional area specialist who can solve the problem holding you back from true greatness.  The one who can make things happen.

Except they aren't working out. And things aren't happening.  So now you’ve got a new problem: do you keep them or let them go? And if you let them go, how do you avoid making the same kind of mistake next time?

Prevention Beats Intervention

Let's answer the last question first.  Make a commitment that from now on you'll use a systematic, evidence-based hiring process to find, evaluate, and select the right candidates for your key positions. No matter how urgent the need. No matter what a great first impression someone makes. Anything less is too risky. A systematic hiring process will add some time and cost up front. The added time and cost required to ensure you make a good hire is pocket change compared to the costs of hiring an unsuitable person.

In fact, without a validated evidence-based approach to hiring, you may have difficulty even figuring out if you made a good hiring decision. Your new hire may be an expert at his job, but the job doesn't exist in isolation, and a second stage company is a unique environment.  It's small, fast-moving, and let's face it, quirky. A lot of the processes are home-grown, a lot of the expertise has yet to move from brains to systems, and a lot of the dynamics are more "family tradition" than functional practices.

There's a learning curve with all that. So if your new hire hasn't hit their stride after three or fourth months, is that just part of the learning process or do you need to look for a new replacement? By doing your homework before making the hire, you'll be a lot more confident in "trusting the process" as your new hire gets oriented and comes up to full speed.

Next: The Evidence For An Evidence-Based Approach To Hiring

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