If you’ve been in practice any length of time, then you’ve probably experienced ‘candidate remorse.’ You thought you had the perfect person when they were interviewing but it’s just not working out. Anyone in business knows the pains of hiring. We’ve all experienced a hire that seemed fantastic in interviews, but later proved very disappointing!
With all the best hiring tools in the world – and there are many from aptitude tests to personality profiles – these simply increase your chances of hiring the correct person for the position. There is only one way to be absolutely sure, however, that you’ve hired the right fit – and that is after they start and you observe their performance.
When clients tell me that they have hired and that the new employee starts on Monday, I don’t consider that they have hired yet, at all! They have just given someone a shot at proving they are a fit for the position. The real decision on whether or not to keep them comes after the first few days, as you review their performance.
Many companies, invest tons of time training new employees, and while training is key – it should only come after it has been determined that the person can perform. The way to ascertain that, is to create a to do list (or have your office manager do so) of tasks that, based on their resume, the new hire should be able to perform. If they cannot do so, no amount of additional training will be productive, because you’ve established, that what they say on their resume they can do, is not actually true.
Maybe they were trained on those tasks, in their past job, but they never quite “got it.” So, training would be wasted on someone like this – since they simply don’t learn well, or they don’t apply what they learn. This would be a person who should not be retained past the first week of their probationary period (which is typically 90 days).
The costs of replacing an employee is on average 200% of their annual salary. But if you use the first week to test out their abilities, and they fail that test, they would not be considered a hire in the first place. You simply go back to the other candidates and choose someone else.
What you want to avoid is “hoping” that with time, this person will improve. Maybe they need more training, maybe they need more time to adjust to the new position etc. Doing this gets very expensive, and the more time invested in a new employee, the more difficult the decision to replace them.
Instead, test their ability to do what they said they could at the interview. This can sometimes be done by way of a working interview – but where that is not possible, it should be a key part of their first few days and again, before any training is offered.
Think of any “failed hires” you’ve had in the past and decide if applying the above would have made a difference.
Ciara MacMahon
Author Bio: Having worked with accounting practices since 1998, and prior to that working as an attorney in a set-up, very similar to a CPA practice, Ciara MacMahon, CEO of Phase Two Management Consulting, has successfully boosted revenues of accounting practices by 3 – 4X, while allowing the owner to take more time out of the practice. Accounting practice owners are faced with endless deadlines and the challenges of managing workflow, finding the right staff, staff training as well as securing the acquisition of quality new clients! They are also often tasked with the not too pleasant responsibility of imparting bad news regarding taxes due, that the unprepared client is unhappy enough about, to oftentimes ‘shoot the messenger’!
As no two practices are the same and each owner has his own vision for what he/she wants, the first step is a Planning Session to work out the owner’s goals and a strategy to obtain them, in the fastest time period, and for the highest return. To schedule your one on one complimentary practice analysis and consultation, email Ciara MacMahon at consultantciara@gmail.com today. www.PhaseTwoManagement.com