Have you ever had a bad employee? One who interviewed well but once they joined the team, never really got going at all?

They were a drain on company resources, and perhaps even a force of divisiveness in the company?

As Eric Schmidt once told me, “The reality is, there are some employees you should get rid of, but the goal of recruitment should be to have no such employees!” – Work Rules

Do you have a formalized hiring process or do you just ask random questions of haphazardly selected candidates? Does the person doing the hiring run the team the new employee will be working on? If the person managing the team will be responsible for hiring, is that leader willing to wait for the right candidate as they need more resources, or will that leader potentially settle for someone ‘okay’ who ends up being a drain on the team?

No doubt hiring is hard. But without a hiring plan, you could be setting yourself up for staffing nightmares.

[Tweet “Hiring is hard. But cleaning up the aftermath of a bad hire can be harder.”]

My plan is to get my wife to interview everyone as I start to hire people. She’s familiar with the work and invested in the company, but far enough away from it to not be influenced by the urgency of the daily grind.

What’s your plan?

photo credit: songzhen cc