Bad internal hires: Mind Your Own Business – Episode 39

This week, poor internal hiring decisions. Great news, your business is doing really well, and as a result, you've got additional seats opening up on your bus. But don't worry, you don't need to go externally in hire, because you've got somebody internally that's doing a great job in the seat that they're in, and they would make a great fit for this role. So what you do is you bring them into the office, you give them a high five, you tell them they've been doing a brilliant job, and then you say to them, do you want this new job, but what the person's really heard is, do you want some more money? and of course, they say, yes, then you bring them into that role.

Bad internal hires: Mind Your Own Business – Episode 39

This week, poor internal hiring decisions. Great news, your business is doing really well, and as a result, you've got additional seats opening up on your bus. But don't worry, you don't need to go externally in hire, because you've got somebody internally that's doing a great job in the seat that they're in, and they would make a great fit for this role. So what you do is you bring them into the office, you give them a high five, you tell them they've been doing a brilliant job, and then you say to them, do you want this new job, but what the person's really heard is, do you want some more money? and of course, they say, yes, then you bring them into that role.

This week, poor internal hiring decisions.

Great news, your business is doing really well, and as a result, you’ve got additional seats opening up on your bus. But don’t worry, you don’t need to go externally in hire, because you’ve got somebody internally that’s doing a great job in the seat that they’re in, and they would make a great fit for this role. So what you do is you bring them into the office, you give them a high five, you tell them they’ve been doing a brilliant job, and then you say to them, do you want this new job, but what the person’s really heard is, do you want some more money? and of course, they say, yes, then you bring them into that role.

About three, four or five months later, all of a sudden, there are some performance issues, and the person isn’t doing what he thought they would do, and you’re really confused, because they were brilliant over there, and they’re doing everything they needed to do over there. They are failing, and you don’t really know why has this person changed? I’m afraid not. What’s happened is that you have made a poor internal hiring decision because we didn’t put that candidate through a proper process. I see this all the time, and it’s so heartbreaking because you lose two seats, you’ve lost the seat where that person was performing really well and doing a great job and the seat that they’re on at the moment.

Well, they’re not performing and the risk is that they might leave the business, you might need to exit them out of the business. Either way, it’s not brilliant. When you hire somebody internally and promote them, I think it’s always important to go through an internal recruitment process. That way the person that you are promoting understands what they are signing up for. You’ve got to put them through a proper process because that way they understand but more importantly, you understand you understand where the gaps are and how realistic you need to be about the time it’s going to take them to be able to step up and what training and support they’re going to need from you know.

Obviously internal development is a great idea, but what I’m suggesting is that you take the responsibility and do it properly. Put people through the process so that you don’t risk losing a player’s and putting them on the seat where they’re just not going to perform. It’s not fair on them and it’s not brilliant for the business.

If you’re looking for more small business tips, then we’d like to see you every week on “Mind Your Own Business,”

Marco Soares is an award-winning business coach in Sussex and is available if you’d like help implementing these tactics.

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