HELP! I Hired the Wrong Guy!

Dear Liz,

I run the Sales & Marketing arm of an online education software firm. I've been in the job for five years.

I'm not going to say I can do the job in my sleep, but up 'til now it's been pretty smooth sailing. The company is doing well, my team is charging forward and everybody's happy to be here, as far as I can tell.

My Partnerships Manager took a corporate job with our company, so I had a Partnerships Manager job open earlier this summer. I interviewed six people and hired a new guy three months ago. My decision to hire my new Partnerships Manager is turning out to be the worst business mistake I've ever made.

"Fred" is a nice person. He knows the vocabulary, people and trends in our industry and he knows how to mechanically put partnership deals together (theoretically - he hasn't done it yet in this job).

You always tell us "Listen to your gut!" but I have to be honest, I ignored my gut when I hired Fred. A voice in my gut was screaming "Don't do it!" but I went with the 'most qualified' applicant, and now I'm paying the price. Fred has been a disaster in the job since Day One.

He's pleasant, unassuming and hard-working. He has no feel for our work at all. I have to walk through the simplest problem-solving situations with him, and while I explain to him how I got from Point A to Point C in a business situation, he's taking notes. He doesn't integrate what I tell him. It seems that his last job was a lot more paper-pushy than this one is, and he isn't up to the task here, not even close.

Fred doesn't make logical leaps, even ones my admin assistant makes without thinking dozens of times a day. He's pleasant to the staff, but hasn't offered up one idea. He's behind the curve very badly and showing no signs of catching up.

Worse, Fred is focused on the wrong things. He's down in the weeds, word-smithing the copy on our partnership agreements instead of looking out on the horizon to see what kinds of partnerships will move us ahead fastest and putting them together.

Enough ranting; it was my mistake, not his. I need to let this guy down gently but I need him out of here pronto. I've kept in touch with a few of the other candidates and I'm fully ready to eat humble pie and correct my painful hiring mistake. How do I do it?

I've talked to Fred a dozen times about my concerns but so far without saying "This isn't going to work." He definitely knows I'm not happy, but his efforts to try and please me are so far off the mark it's painful to observe. We don't have an HR person in our division, but there is someone in HR I can work with at HQ.

Thanks in advance -

Joel

Joel,

Mistakes are good. We learn from them, although it can be painful learning. Now you know that the formal requirements on your Partnerships Manager job description were the least important aspects of the job.

What you really needed was someone smart and high-altitude, someone who can spot opportunities and jump on them; you got poor, down-in-the-weeds Fred instead.

We cannot keep Fred in suspended agony -- poor Fred, who's taking notes to try and break down your logical leaps into algorithms he can understand and emulate.

I'm glad you see that Fred's hire was your mistake and not his. One of the worst situations I run across is the one where a hiring manager brings a new person on board, isn't satisfied, and makes it the new hire's fault!

Our goal is to move Fred along his path respectfully and with dignity, clearing the way for you to get the right person into your Partnerships Manager spot and your anxiety level down to half what it is now.

Here's what you'll do:

1) Talk to the HR manager at headquarters before you proceed, to keep him or her abreast of your plans.

(Don't let your HR person, if he or she comes from the Godzilla Old School branch of HR, suck you into some horrible Progressive Discipline vortex. That crusty Progressive Discipline garbage is insulting to adults. We don't put forty-seven-year-olds on probation, for God's sake. We say to them, "This doesn't feel like it's working, to me. What do you think?")

It's an energetic mismatch between you and Fred. He didn't do anything wrong, and he isn't at fault or remiss. No one is. It's just not a good partnership, as it were.

2) Sit down with Fred and talk with him about your concerns. Let him know that it isn't going to work out between him and this job.

You aren't interested in writing some stupid 90-day action plan. Your gut is speaking loudly now, the way it does when you ignore its quieter nudges. Fred has to move on.

But you hired him, so you owe him. Six weeks pay is reasonable for three months of work, but the issue for Fred is going to be "What am I going to tell prospective employers about this incident?" Ethically, you have to help cover him on that front.

3) Offer Fred a very limited and defined short-term consulting gig that will let him keep his association with your company (for instance, on his LinkedIn profile) while he's job-hunting. The last thing we want Fred to have to say is "It didn't work out for me at XYZ Industries, so they let me go" and poor guileless Fred is likely to say just that if you don't coach him differently.

He should say instead "I went over to XYZ Industries to help them get their Partnership infrastructure together, and it turned out that they needed a guy to go out and find deals, whereas I'm more of the back-end administrator guy, so I'm consulting for them now."

That covers Fred's exit and also helps steer him into jobs that will be a better fit for him than yours is.

It's going to cost you six weeks of Fred's salary (three months would be even more decent of you, if you can swing it) plus a little cash for his short-term consulting project (at Human Workplace we call that type of project an Exit Ramp).

Here's what you'll win for that small expense:

• Your reputation as a decent company and an ethical leader will stay intact.
• Your staff will see that you don't throw people under the bus when things aren't working out the way you want them to.
• Fred will continue to say good things about your company, and perhaps turn you on to great partnerships in the future.
• You'll be able to look in the mirror in the morning without wincing.

It is the age of the Human Workplace, Joel, where people behave like humans even (especially!) when they're at work. Fred is a good guy, you're a good guy, and we're all just trying to figure stuff out and get through the day, which is not all that easy to do. Everything we can do to make life at work easier and gentler and more human is worth doing.

If your HR person balks at our Human Workplace solution to the Fred problem, tell him or her to call me. Progressive Discipline and its fellow Industrial Revolution HR practices are going out the window as we speak. Stay human, Joel!

Best,

Liz

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