Making it through the hiring process can be exhausting. GroupOne Background Screening has been there and we get it. You found the right person with a great résumé who has the skills needed. Yet once they start work, you notice things are off.
The harsh reality is sometimes the person you saw in the job interviews isn’t the same person who works for you.
Sure, it’s important to recognize the learning curve and everyone deserves an adequate amount of time to reach their potential. But at the same time, failure to recognize what is obviously a “bad hire” can have far-reaching consequences for your company, affecting everything from productivity to morale. But how can you tell if you’ve made a bad hire?
As stated before, there will be a learning curve. But what shouldn’t be tolerated is making the same mistakes over and over again.
First of all, make sure your new employee is getting the necessary training. If that’s the case and the same mistakes are occurring regularly, it’s a sign of laziness or incompetence. Either way, it doesn’t bode well for the employee’s future.
Work schedules were laid out in advance and contracts signed. Yet suddenly during the first couple of weeks, your new employee is asking for special privileges. That’s a red flag.
If everyone works Monday through Friday from 8 to 5, and that was clearly conveyed to the new hire, then it’s a problem if they are asking for a four-day workweek or leaving early every Wednesday. If there was a problem with the schedule, it should have been addressed during the interview. Besides, catering to a new employee while forcing existing workers to stick to the norm will create big problems.
You want employees who speak up when they have something important to say, but no one likes a complainer.
If all you’ve heard from a new hire in the first couple of weeks is how the company is lacking and the coffee isn’t up to par, it’s possible you’ve made the bad hire. Constructive criticism is fine, but those are much different than complaints. If your new hire is just bringing up negatives without solutions or positivity, they are probably not going to have a good impact.
Creating a productive atmosphere is an important part of the hiring process. Unfortunately, one bad hire can pollute the entire organization. If everything was working fine before and suddenly, your existing employees are unhappy because no one is getting along with the new hire, there’s an issue.
There are two sides to every story, so make sure you talk to both groups. But if you’ve hired someone and suddenly your workplace is unhappy and unproductive, it might be because you’ve made the bad hire.
You go through the painstaking hiring process and finally decide on someone. But when you bring them in, instead of acclimating to your business, all you hear is “Well this is how we did it at my old company.”
Remember, there’s a difference between having trouble acclimating and being unwilling to adapt.
While good ideas from other jobs can always be implemented, employees shouldn’t be of the mindset there’s only one way to do things. This isn’t the new hire’s old company – it’s your company. And you need to make sure you’ve hired someone who can adapt or else you’ll need to restart the hiring process.
In sports, great team chemistry can lead to championships. It’s no different in the workplace. If your workers like each other and enjoy coming to work every day, it’s vital you hire with that in mind. If the balance has been upset and the only change is the new hire, you need to think about excising the new employee from the situation. Happy employees are productive employees.
There’s nothing worse than thinking you’ve hired a go-getter only to find out that’s not the case.
The first few weeks of a new employee’s tenure should be a time when they’re trying to impress. A stellar employee will come in and try to make a positive mark immediately, going above and beyond. So, if a new hire arrives and turns down work, says no to projects or develops the incredibly irritating habit of saying “that’s not my job,” consider the “bad hire alarm” raised.
Great employees try to impress, while bad hires either don’t take initiative or shirk responsibilities.
If you’ve made a mistake and need to go back to the rehire drawing board, it’s not the end of the world. It’s just the dreaded bad hire.