Worst Hire - my lessons

My entrepreneurial journey has been fascinating. I’ve had numerous experiences that have taught me valuable lessons. One such experience came from hiring the worst person for the job. Let’s discuss the lessons I learned and help you avoid this mistake.

Instincts

Trusting your instincts is a good thing to do. 90% of the time, it will help you and probably save you. This isn’t always the business case. Emotions and instincts can cloud your judgment and lead you to make poor decisions. I made the mistake early on to believe a perfect interviewee would be the right fit for my company. I’ve had some of my best employees have poor interviews. Instinct would lead you to go for the best interviewee. Instincts aren’t overly reliable in the dynamics of running a business.

Be Thorough in Recruitment

The recruitment process is vital to obtaining a new employee. Fine-tuning and streamlining this process will help you eliminate poor candidates. Our current recruitment system is better suited to select competent people. I previously had a lax recruitment system. It only involved a Google meeting and a takeaway task to complete. It’s safe to say there were many loopholes to exploit, and many did. This one candidate had a friend coach them through the interview and did the task for them. Our previous system did not account for this. We hired the worst person for the job. A proper system will ensure you get the best person to improve your organization.

Looks can be deceiving

A person’s initial portrayal doesn’t reflect who they are. This ties into trusting your instinct a little too much. People may be weird or poor in interviews, only to become the best hire you could make. Others can ace the interview and appear as the perfect candidates but are utterly incompetent. All that glitters is not gold. Take the interviews at face value and research other aspects they portray. This will help you make the best decision with the information you have. Remember, some of my best recruits had forgettable interviews. This one person who taught me these lessons had the best interview.

Conclusion

Numerous things need to go right to hire the right person. You should have a strict recruitment process, be level-headed, and not overly rely on the optics of the interview. It is a mixed-bag process. You never know what intangibles any potential recruit has. Following these tips will help you avoid the mistakes I made. Getting the right people on board is vital for the success of any business. We may make a mistake or two along the way, but the important thing is what we learn from them.