I hired a guy because I liked him.
We had worked together before. Several years earlier, at a different company, he was a consultant, and he was an effective program manager for me. I felt the same man could lead an operations organization. That feeling did the hiring.
What I was convinced of was him. We would come in and shoot the shit. Kids. The potential in our kids. How much we had in common. He was easy to laugh with. He was a good time. Honorable. Someone I wanted around.
I have friends like that all over my life. People I love to laugh with and chill with. I would not work with some of them for long. I know that difference. I knew it with him. I hired him anyway.
What did I miss?
He would have been a strong program manager. That is the job he had already done for me, and he was good at it. I never tested whether that job was this one. I liked him, and I let it stand in for leading an operations organization.
When I thought he understood, he did not. He would go to his people, and they would explain it to him. He still did not fully understand it. So the direction he gave, and what got done, was not what that situation needed.
He was in a translation fight. Not a language. The work. He was struggling to understand what needed to get done, so he struggled to give his team the right direction. They could see the gap from the questions they were getting. This was the person who was supposed to be leading them, and he was asking them for something they had expected him to know. It was obvious.
It was hard on him. I put him in a position I should not have.
Deliverables were getting missed, and people were getting frustrated. I was frustrated with the missed deliverables. The team was frustrated with the unclear direction and the lack of knowledge. It became obvious that I had made a bad hire. I had to let him go.
I failed him. I also made a bad hire, and it sucked, and I think about it a lot. Those two things sit in the same hour. He is the one who had to walk out. I am the one who put him in a role I had not vetted, against an expectation I was carrying in my head. Whose fault is that? It is mine.
Why is hiring on likability a trap?
I am a people person. I love to talk to people. I like getting to know them. I like the differences, especially when someone comes from a background nothing like mine. I find it fascinating.
Liking someone does not predict the hire. What matters is whether they can do the job.
Hire the person for the role. Go have a beer with your friends. Hire the right person for the job.
Gary Vaynerchuk says a lot of leaders get caught hiring friends who are similar to them, and who are not what they need.
We often hire when the seat is empty and the pressure is to fill it. An empty seat is expensive. A bad hire is even more expensive. People hesitate to let someone go because they think somebody is better than nobody. If the somebody is wrong, nobody is better.
The fallacy was that the fault was his, because he could not do the job. The fault was mine. I hired him to do a job he was not capable of doing.
Jim