How to Deal When You’ve Made a Hiring Mistake

10 Feb How to Deal When You’ve Made a Hiring Mistake

The longer a person is in business, and in a position to make personnel decisions, the greater the odds of making a bad hire. 

A person can look outstanding on paper, make a great first impression and feel like a perfect fit for your team, but after the first few days, it’s more a round peg in a square hole situation than hand-in-glove. 

Bad hires can breed resentment, kill productivity, slow momentum, and foster anger among a team. And after the loss of an employee, hiring a new one that doesn’t work out can be very frustrating. 

It’s not the end of the world, though. 

Signs of a hiring mistake include:

*The person is always late, showing a lack of commitment and poor time management skills. 

*There’s a bad, unfriendly, or otherwise unprofessional attitude from the start of their first day. Negativity can bring down the whole team. 

*Too many comparisons to previous employers. You want to bring someone in who has the experience and a work history that will fit in and add skills to your team. But it can be an indication of stubbornness and an unwillingness to learn new ways if the hire keeps pointing out how things were done at their previous job. 

Now what? 

Here’s what to do when a hiring mistake has been made: 

1. Learn from it

Go back through the hiring process and think whether there were any red flags along the way that were overlooked. Make notes. Did you get a gut feeling at any point that this might not be the person for the job? Learn to trust your instinct and keep moving forward. 

2. Try to talk it out

It’s possible that some can be frank, but specific, feedback and conversations can help rectify the situation and save the position. It might take some work, but if you feel it’s worth a try, give it a go. But know at the outset that it might not work. 

3. Look around the company for other options

Is there another department looking for someone with similar skills? Could the person add something special to a different team? Might a different job provide a better fit? Try to make the best of a bad situation and give the person a chance elsewhere, if at all possible. 

4. Weigh all the possibilities

Hiring an employee is a time- and resource-consuming effort. If the person you’ve hired really isn’t working out, and there are no opportunities for salvaging the decision, cutting ties might be the best option for all involved. It’s just business, it’s not personal, and sometimes these things happen. 

Ideally, you’ll never have to deal with a situation like this. But if you do, be honest and open about it, learn from it, and take steps to avoid it happening again. 

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