I have been following the strategy of Hire Slow, Fire Fast when it comes to recruiting and have come to realize that there are a number of severe limitations to this strategy. Here are a few:
- If your company’s customer base is growing rapidly, your team of brilliant people can become overworked and demotivated because of it. Hiring more rapidly might be a good idea in these situations.
- Firing fast is much easier said than done. Once you’ve brought on a new team member, I feel a strong obligation to give this person every chance I can before firing them for underperformance. I try to help them with training, switching them to different types of tasks, and doing everything I can to help them succeed.
- Hiring slow will limit your growth. My capacity has pretty much been the biggest limitation of my business growth over the last year.
I will still follow the strategy of Hire Slow, Fire Fast… but there are some major disadvantages to it. Your thoughts?
How timely, I just sent out an email on this exact topic. Hiring too slowly CAN hinder your growth, but hiring too fast can do the same thing — when you have to spend an inordinate amount of time training, coaching, and correcting, or ultimately having to fire them and start from scratch with a new hire.
That was my mistake, being in a rush to fill a position and hiring someone who didn’t really wow me. I figured the job wasn’t rocket science and they would figure it out. They didn’t.
Firing people sucks. Stressful and emotional, even when it’s pretty evident the performance is meeting expectations.
Nick – yeah I am glad you agree! Very painful when you have to let someone go!