As a leader who is just starting out, hiring and firing team members might just be one of the hardest things you will have to do.
What do you need? How do you select the right candidate? And where do you even start looking?
In today’s blog, we’re exploring the difficulties of hiring for your own business or as a leader in a bigger company.
WHY HIRING RIGHT IS IMPORTANT:
We all know that picking the wrong employee can be an expensive exercise but how expensive is it really?
The cost of hiring a bad candidate ranges from 5 to 27 times the amount of that person’s salary. A number that staggers most people to the point they don’t believe it. However, if you look at it, it makes sense. As a company you are effectively back to square one and have to start over from scratch while enduring a whole array of other negative consequences.
The hiring costs, potential severance package, the salary they were paid for doing a sub-standard job, the loss of opportunity that a good hire would have brought to your business, and the wasted hours and resources spent trying to develop the weak candidate into a half decent one to at least salvage the disaster are just the start of the list of costs one bad decision can create.
Other things to consider are how the void left by a vacated role affects the morale and workload put on other members of your team. The wasted time from the HR and administrative arms of your business. Potential loss of business or lawsuits caused by mistakes the bad hire may have made. Time spent double checking their work, covering for them, or smoothing things over with unhappy customers or staff.
But most importantly, you’ve let an A Player slip through your fingers. That 1 in 10 person who would have really accelerated your business growth and performed fantastically in that role.
To make a long story short, don’t take the approach that anyone will do. Though a department may be short staffed, and screaming out for help as they buckle under the workload and pressure, throwing in a warm body to fill the hole will hurt in the long run.
It’s better to struggle in the short term, hold out for a true A Player, and thrive well into the future.
THE RIGHT EXPERIENCE & RIGHT TIME
When thinking of expanding your team, you should carefully consider what stage your business, or that particular role is at.
Hiring a junior or entry level staff member can make sense if you need to quickly fill the role and your business is still young. Or when you are looking to groom the new hire from scratch to fit your exact need. Hiring an experienced candidate who can offer years of knowledge, wisdom, and relationships may not be as important at that moment in time.
Experienced people with deep industry connections, experience and know-how are harder to find and bring their own set of challenges. Hiring for a senior role is where you can quickly find yourself over your head. Hiring someone with the same or a better level of knowledge as yourself can create instability on multiple levels. However, once you find the perfect candidate who compliments rather than overshadows you, they can provide massive value to you and your team.
In the end the most important question becomes: “What do I need?” The clearer the answer, the better the result of your hire will be.
WHAT YOU CAN DO TO MAKE IT EASIER
Whether you aim for a junior role to bolster the ranks, or for a veteran member of the industry, finding the right candidate still might not come naturally to you. Hiring is one of the most important decisions in your company - even more so when you are expanding rapidly. Hire too quickly, and it can be hard to determine if they will stay long enough for their contribution to matter; hire too slowly, and someone else might grab them away from under your nose!
A candidate's experience in a 2-million-dollar business might be great, but when your company is nowhere near or far ahead of that size it can negatively impact your growth and stop you in your tracks.
Knowing all that, it might not be a bad idea to seek help from a professional to aid in your hiring process. There are plenty of recruiters or recruiting agencies out there who have the experience you might be lacking. Another option is enlisting the help of already experienced members of your team.
To wrap it all up, hiring and firing in any business can make or break its success. Knowing what you need and when you need it are crucial aspects of avoiding the pitfalls of a bad hire and might bring you that A player you have been looking for. Remember there are professionals out there ready to help and guide you through the process.
As business consultants and COOs, we work with entrepreneurs every day to set them up for success by identifying where their business is suffering. We help them pinpoint which processes to re-evaluate and adjust to grow their business. And best yet… We offer hassle-free, no obligation 30-minute discovery calls to see how we could help you. Just contact us today.
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