What to do when a new hire doesn’t meet expectations | Managers at Work

Listen to this article

“I just realized that we made a terrible mistake with our last hire. While he is personable and able to execute on some aspects of the job, I discovered recently that he doesn’t have the problem-solving skills he needs to do the job well. And I have very limited time to coach him. I could see him maybe moving into another position here eventually, but it does not pay as much. Are there any strategies we could use to address the issues while we figure this out?”

It happens all the time. That candidate who has the right credentials, interviews well — seems so likeable and bonds with the team — should be a natural fit for a job. But instead, they turn out to be completely wrong.

Acknowledging the problem — and being honest about it — is often difficult and, as a result, many organizations will tolerate a bad hire rather than taking the more proactive step of coaching the employee and trying to help them move to a position that’s a better fit. Unfortunately, coaching is time-consuming.

“That’s code for ‘I don’t want to coach this person’,” says Jim Kestenbaum, president and corporate psychologist at The Solutions Group, a leadership coaching firm in Pittsford.

It might be helpful to approach this problem in two ways, he says. One is to look back — what caused it and what could you have done to prevent this from happening? And the other is forward-looking — what should you do now? One question you could ask, for example, is what would happen if you took the problem-solving part of this job away. “Would that allow him to do his job well?”

Given the skills and the experience the individual is bringing to the job, does that equal a job that the company might have? “Because he’s personable — is there another job that might make more sense for this person?”

This is where you might want to bring in someone from talent management to help reassess the person’s skills and expertise and consider job opportunities that might make sense. “Most of my clients don’t like to fire someone in this scenario,” Kestenbaum says.

Studies on the incidence of hiring failure show high failure rates. Leadership IQ, a training and employee engagement firm, found that 46 percent of all new hires fail within their first 18 months. And of that number, 89 percent fail because of their attitudes, not their skills.

And of course, companies face high costs every time they make a bad hire. According to a  CareerBuilder study, companies lost an average of $18,700 on each bad hire. This number is not just about salaries — it also includes onboarding, training, disruption to workflow and turnover, not to mention “cleaning up” after a bad hire and finding someone to replace the bad hire.

Indeed, pinpointing the exact cause/origins of a bad hire problem can be a complex job. In a LinkedIn piece earlier this year, the recruiting firm Cast USA pointed to several reasons for hiring failure, including the failure to pre-screen candidates effectively, the lack of clear expectations, lack of feedback, poor communications and “culture shock.”

Lack of communication is a two-sided issue, not just an employer one, Cast USA noted. “It’s important for employees to voice their opinions and express if they need help with their work/workload to avoid feeling undervalued or unsupported, so open and honest conversations should be encouraged from both sides.”

Company culture is often overlooked in this scenario. “When a new hire is not comfortable with a company’s culture, they are likely to struggle when adjusting and fitting in with their coworkers. This can lead to feelings of isolation and disconnection, which can negatively impact performance and satisfaction,” the report noted.

“A new hire who isn’t fitting in may also have difficulty understanding and following the norms and expectations of the company culture, leading to further misunderstandings and mistakes.”

Indeed, culture can also play an important role in how a company manages a bad hire situation, Kestenbaum says. Some companies tend to be rigid in their approaches to hiring and only see black-and-white solutions to bad hire problems, while other companies try different solutions. “Some companies are able to be more flexible and they’re better able to utilize the talent.”

If you as a manager can get past the guilt, frustration, and stress of this situation, you have an opportunity to provide feedback and learn more about this person’s struggles with the job and how you can help. You can point out the difficulties the person is having on the job and ask them to provide their own assessment. You can ask, “Is there something going on that has prevented you from using your problem-solving skills?”  It takes a lot of emotional intelligence to have a difficult and uncomfortable conversation like this, but the results can be worthwhile, Kestenbaum says.

In a Harvard Business Review piece on “What to Do When You Realize You Made a Bad Hire,” consultant Liz Kislik described how one of her clients hired a junior staffer for his “moxie, energy and drive,” but unfortunately started making “careless mistakes and was goofing around” with other employees.

“His manager gave him careful feedback on his behavior and asked lots of questions about why the job felt unsatisfying,” she writes. “Luckily, thanks to projected business growth and flexible organizational parameters, the manager was able to shift the new hire to another department and a more challenging job that suited his ambitions better. “ To ensure a smooth transition, the company also took the opportunity to add an intensive training program.

This approach doesn’t always work, but hopefully the person will make a “significant personal effort” to improve within three to six months, Kislik says.

In some cases, Kestenbaum says, a job will “outgrow the person.” Some employees might do their jobs well when the operation is a certain size, but struggle a lot when there’s significant growth.

If you and your talent management or human resources person identify ways to fix the situation within the company but things still don’t work out, it’s better to take action than to let things go, even if the result is a severance package and termination. “I’ve had numerous clients who know there is not a good fit for the person in their company, but they feel guilty, so the person stays, underperforms, and wonders when they’re going to get fired. It’s very uncomfortable for everyone on the team. It makes peers lose confidence in leadership and creates a team/organizational downturn in productivity.”

When you look back at your hiring process, what part of it could have been more effective: identifying candidates, interviews, assessments, reference checks or something else?  “You start by saying that no hiring process is foolproof,” he says. “In some companies, particularly in smaller organizations, the hiring processes are not well articulated and as a result, they’re not that effective.”

During the interviews, for example, make sure to find specific ways to ask questions that will address the real skills and expertise needed in the job. In some cases, interviewers don’t know how to assess the skills for the job, so they move to questions around culture fit and relationships because “that is what they know,” Kestenbaum says.

Whether it’s interviewing or another part of the hiring process, it’s important to learn what you can about what went wrong so it doesn’t happen again, Kislik says. “It will be crucial that the replacement works out well.”

Managers at Work is a monthly column exploring the issues and challenges facing managers. Contact Kathleen Driscoll with questions or comments by email at [email protected]