Character Judgements, Instincts, and My Bad Hires
Firing Sam (name changed to protect him and others) was something I’d have liked to avoid. I liked the guy in question and was hoping that my previous disciplinary action would have been enough to make him improve his performance. Unfortunately, I’d received a message early that morning indicating that he’d missed the weekly meeting he was supposed to run with the offshore team for the project he ran. It was the third time in just under four weeks this had happened. I sent him an Instant Message. No response. I sent a text. Crickets. I called. Straight to Voicemail. I tried again around 9am, with the same results.
He didn’t “resurface” until just after 6:30 that evening. I got an overly long text with a detailed description of how he’d been in the ER with heart palpitations. I replied that he should call me tomorrow, then notified my VP, who gave me the answer I already knew was coming — get rid of him. So, the next morning, I did. I had tried with him, but between his unreliable nature, occasional attitude problem, plus the fact that I’d given him an open dialogue to admit to me the real problem we all knew — he had an issue with alcohol — there was nothing left to do.
If I’d listened to my gut, I wouldn’t have hired him. He seemed a bit jumpy and nervous on the video interview, but it wasn’t something I could easily quantify. I wasn’t convinced he would do well, but my (often picky) boss didn’t like anyone else we had interviewed, and he was the first person he didn’t immediately shoot down, merely looking at me and saying “It’s your call, Morgan.” I noticed at least five other minor red flags, but I ignored them because I was borderline desperate to hire someone after two months of doing two people’s work, and I thought he would be good enough. Two weeks in, he showed up looking clammy, unshaven, and under a strong cloud of cologne and breath mints. I groaned internally because I knew what that meant.
It was five years later that I hired Bryce, who was more annoying from a personal standpoint. He didn’t have any substance issues, in fact, he was a very likable father of three who I rather enjoyed working with when he wasn’t giving me headaches. No, Bryce’s problem was that he was “overemployed,” as the modern parlance phrases it, and I had to babysit him to get him to do his tasks promptly. I figured this out pretty quickly, and had a talk with him to the effect of “I don’t want details on why this took you so long, but please, meet your deadlines.” It barely helped for a few weeks.
I’d hired him, again, out of fear. I needed someone quickly, and the post-pandemic hiring squeeze was driving wages up quickly. Out of four finalists, I’d ruled out one for not being experienced enough, one for wanting way too much money, and made an offer to a candidate named Rachel. She hemmed, then turned it down due to a better offer. Bryce had been number two out of the four — good enough, but again, several small red flags made my spidey sense tingle in a bad way. About 10 months in, fate intervened and I had to hire a contractor to support his role when he was forced to take emergency leave due to his child being born approximately two months premature. The contractor ended up being much more proficient, and when he came back, he did pick up his speed due to the challenge put on him by me and the obvious reality of productivity, but it wasn’t enough. When I was asked to make cuts, I chose him.
There are probably another handful of people I’ve hired over the last decade-plus of interviewing who have not worked out long-term for one reason or another, out of well over 100, but those are the two who stick out the most. It’s not just their performance, others noticing their deficiencies or even the reflection on my team and department that makes me pick them out from the others.
It’s that I made the decisions on fear. The fear which propelled me to ignore gut feelings that turned out to be on the money. But I ignored them because my fear told me I was being unreasonable.
We all have expectations on who we’d like to have answer the job advert or get pulled by the recruiter when we start interviewing for an open role. Then, we have to pick a real-life human. There’s a famous story about how the casting director for the movie “The Graduate” was told to find a guy who looked like an Ivy League basketball player, good-looking and tall, but, out of several thousand men seen on casting calls, they picked short, slightly nebbish Dustin Hoffman. Moral of the story — sometimes people will give you surprises you don’t expect, so don’t judge the book until you’ve given it a chance.
Still, it’s moments like these which make me realize that while a gut instinct isn’t infallible, it’s also not something to be ignored. Good employees and teammates are not just someone who knows how to do the job, but also someone willing to buy in. So until I figure out a way to measure potential willingness during an interview, I may have to revert to my instincts a little bit more.
