Hire Slow, Fire Fast is the Best Way

Hire Quality is a boutique executive recruitment firm and we've been saying "Hire Slow, Fire Fast" to our clients for many years, so when I came across this article in Fast Company recently I had to share it with you.  The personal perspective of this article by Carrie Kerpen is interesting and good to think about as a common management challenge we're all faced with - but do you agree with this?   Here's the article ...

Authored By  -- Carrie Kerpen is the CEO of Likeable Media, a social media and word of mouth marketing firm. You can follow her on Twitter @carriekerpen or her company @likeablemedia
[Image: Flickr user Naren King]

I recently read Danny Boyce's piece in Fast Company titled, "Why Hire Slow, Fire Fast Is A Bunch of BS ." As someone who has worked both in corporate America and has launched a startup, I respectfully disagree.

I remember the first time I ever had to fire someone. She was a 55-year-old radio salesperson. I was a brand-new manager, and my boss was on maternity leave, and had asked that I let her go, as she wasn't making her quota. I was terrified, and delivered the good old "this is actually better for you in the long run" speech. Afterwards, I felt a combination of relief and nausea, and I called my business mentor, who told me--"If firing people ever feels to easy, get the heck out of the business. You've been doing it too long." I think that's true no matter how necessary the fire is--it sucks to let people go.

Of course, in the long run, firing people who aren't working out, and doing it quickly before the problems escalate, is the best thing for the company and for the person. And I'm sure that even Boyce would agree that when you have time, conducting a more extensive, elongated interview process might result in finding better talent. But what happens when you're a startup, and you are living on borrowed time, and you are so strapped for resources that you will fail if you don't have warm bodies there doing the work?

You STILL hire slow.

There was a bloodbath of firings, lost clients, and the morale of the people who were still at the company just plummeted

 

My husband Dave and I started our company Likeable Media in 2007. We did it with no outside funding; we were just two dopes with an idea that businesses needed some help understanding the impact that social media could have on their organizations. We started to grow--and grow fast. So fast, in fact, that we couldn't staff the clients that we had. We started bringing people in the door. If you had ever tweeted in your life, you were a great candidate to work at Likeable Media. Have a Facebook account? Come on board. Can you guess what happened?

There was a bloodbath. A bloodbath of firings, lost clients, and the morale of the people who were still at the company just plummeted. This was four years ago, and I still remember it like it was yesterday. We were lucky to make it out of those times alive, and we learned a lot in the process. And so, while I understand the resistance for startups to "hire slow, fire fast," I urge you to think twice before bringing in the mailman to code your next IPhone app. Here are some things that I learned while growing Likeable Media that I hope other startups find useful.

1. Your business partners have the most skin in the game. Make sure they don't mind getting dirty. Most people don't start a startup entirely on their own. Usually, there are 2-3 partners involved.

When you are choosing your partners--which is usually before you do ANYTHING else--make sure the skill sets are varied enough that you can cover the main core components of your business via your partners. Two tech guys who can't sell or market need another partner. Two marketers who are slick salespeople but don't make their own product need a developer. Choose your partners wisely and you will struggle less in hiring. Remember, partners are in this WAY more than any employee will ever be, and they'll step up when they need to.

2. Use short-term incentives to get by. I learned this from my advisory board when I literally sobbed in a meeting with them about not having enough talent to staff my growing business. Take the best employees in your business, explain the situation, and offer them cash/incentives to help. I cannot tell you how many times I have asked a staff member to take on an extra account or two while I found the perfect fit to service them. Do you know why they do it? Not out of the goodness of their hearts. It's because they know if I hire someone who stinks, they'll be fired within a month and the account will end up coming to them anyway. Stretch your best employees, but reward them for it. If they're comfortable, they'll snap right back into shape.

3. Trust your gut, but don't obsess over it. In my past four years running Likeable Media, there have been three instances where I KNEW I needed to hire someone on the spot. Sometimes, your gut just tells you what you need to know. Those three people grew to be on my management team, and are now the key leaders of our organization. While I know I can't replicate that experience as often as I like, I often find myself saying "Do I feel the way about this interview that I felt when I met (star employee)?" Most of the time the answer is no, but I follow it up with a second question--could this person grow to be (star employee)? If I think the potential is there, and my gut feels good, I go for it. I find that this keeps me from hiring SO slowly that my team suffers, but allows me to be discerning enough not to let bad hires affect my business.

As a social media and content marketing agency, my people are my product, and I need LOTS of people! But the best part of hiring slow and firing fast is this--once you're in, you usually stay in. And last year, when we were named the 28th best place to work in New York City, I couldn't help but feel like the overused adage "Hire Slow, Fire Fast" had a teeny bit to do with it.

 

Source: http://www.fastcompany.com/3006206/why-hire-slow-fire-fast-better-idea-you-think

 

Hire Quality partners with clients to build high performance teams by recruiting and selecting new talent and by upgrading current staff through training and development. For more information go to www.hirequality.ca