Who You Hire and Who You Fire!

How many times have we heard, it’s all about hiring the right people? Without the right people, you can’t build the right culture, and without the right culture you can’t deliver the best customer experience. All true! But, hiring the right person can be tough right? After all, we don’t know a person until we spend time with them and learn their behaviours and patterns. In the interview, a person can come off highly competent and show huge measures of the right mindset, but in reality, cracks can show quickly and motivation can be lost, leaving you with a problem on your hands. What do you do in this position?

Sure, we are trained to spend time with that person, giving them guidance, proper management, tools and parameters to work in, so that they can do a good job… but what if that still doesn’t work? How long should you give them? What if you are spending all your time having to measure and manage this person, that you are getting nothing done yourself, and this becomes a real hinderance. Do we then slip in to the mindset of ‘there’s no point…I need to get stuff done’, leaving them to float around unproductively but yet still paying them? With all the intentions in the world that you will get back to managing them later when you have a bit more time.

Are you even measuring? Do you even know that they are being unproductive? Maybe you think a member of staff is fitting in well, as you only see this side of them, but in reality, all other members of staff disagree as this person is not a team player. What tool are you using to see this?

A smart man once said to me, it’s not knowing who to hire (as you can’t always get this right), but it’s knowing who to fire. The ones that don’t fit the culture, take up all your time and consistently under deliver… they’re not bad people, they just don’t belong here… move them on as quickly as possible.

If you consistently have 2 outstanding, 2 good and 2 not so good sales people… how long have you had the ‘not so good’ ones and how much time are you investing in them, when you could potentially be investing in the ones that are making a real difference, and concentrating on finding more suited people.

Are you measuring and moving? If not, why not?

Please feel free to leave a comment, we’d love to hear from you …..

Laura