Fire Your Worst Employee During the Hiring Process

The best way to fire your worst employee is to never hire them in the first place.

Seems obvious, but companies get themselves into this unfortunate situation often.  

The stress and desperation of an open position makes a business owner perceive a candidate who interviews well and looks good on paper as a perfect fit. If the business owner is wrong—and that candidate is not the right person for the seat—it can be disastrous.

To find the right person for the right seat, you need a hiring process. And it takes a commitment of time and a little bit of homework on your part.

Here’s how to avoid that bad hire before the offer is made:

Slow down. 

Don’t feel like you need to “fill the seat yesterday.” Making quick decisions will end up costing you time, money and headaches in the end.

Create a position profile.

A position profile is a job description on steroids. Along with the job responsibilities and qualification requirements, it describes the company, its culture, and its core values. It creates buy-in and gives the candidate a glimpse of what it would be like to work for your company.

Interview for culture and core values.

Talk about your core values during the interview, and ask questions that will help you determine if the candidate shares those values. Use a tool like our “Build a Superstar Team” Scoresheet to identify those Superstars.

Use a high quality assessment to measure their capacity.

We like the ones that measure personality and mental aptitudes, such as the Achiever™ Assessment.

When you have a formal hiring process, you can avoid the bad hire and realize the following benefits:

Save money.

You will save 3-5 times the bad hire’s salary by hiring the right person the first time around. Depending on the level of position, this costs your business hundreds of thousands of dollars

Save time.

You will save approximately 278 hours of wasted time* undoing what you did, and then doing it all over again to find the right person.

Spare morale.

You’ll avoid the cultural impact a bad hire can have on your otherwise positive and productive team.

Safeguard your reputation.

You’ll dodge the hit to your hard-earned brand reputation when your customers encounter a hire who does not represent your culture or core values.

The stress of an open position is less painful than the harm of a bad hire. VisionSpark can help you avoid this costly mistake and get it right the first time. Want to learn more? Contact us.

*according to Topgrading