Oops You Hired a Lemon. What Now?

Finally! The open position you’ve had on your team for the last few weeks has been filled. You feel like you found the perfect candidate after countless interviews and resumes and your new employee is in their office setting up their desk. Little did you know, this employee is about to cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars and endanger your teams productivity and morale and maybe cause you to lose a major client. Why? Because you hired a lemon.

According to leadershipIQ a staggering 46% of new hires are considered mis-hires within the first 18 months. These mis-hires can have far reaching effects on your business that you couldn't prepare for.
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1. Mis-hires cost you A LOT of money: Not including the costs associated with the hiring process, the typical mis-hire costs the company at least 30% of their earnings in a conservative estimate by the U.S. Department of Labor. While Zappos CEO Tony Hursh estimates that the true cost of mis-hires has cost his company over $100 million. It’s possible this mis-hire can cost you a major client and that would mean millions in financial losses.
2. Decreased productivity and morale: A mis-hire spreads a culture of disengagement. When your mis-hire doesn’t want to be at work, the rest of your employees can tell. Not only does it spoil the mood, but it sets a low bar for the rest of your employees. If this person can get away with slacking, why can’t they?  According to a Gallup report tracking employee engagement since 2000, less than one-third of U.S. employees report being enthusiastic about coming to work.
3. More work for you and your employees: You hired this person to take some weight off your shoulders. Instead, you and your employees are now having to pick up their slack and fix their mistakes. Say goodbye to getting off at 5pm and eating dinner with the family, because now you have to stay late cleaning up the mess of your mis-hire.
4. Creates a culture of micro-managing: You wish you could believe this employee was going to do his or her job, but they aren’t and now you have to check everything they do. Does this make you a micro-manager, maybe not but it sure makes it seem like you are one. Other employees feel like you may be hovering over them too, and creates a feeling of distrust in the office.
5. Your employees will leave you: Mis-hires can sometimes get so bad that they completely change the culture of the office. Constant complaining and laziness will get to the rest of your best employees and some will jump ship because of it.

What can you do to try and fix the problem? Although firing them seems like a good option, it means you have to give them a severance package and invest more money into a new search. Unless you make some changes in the way you screen and train new hires you are bound to hire another mis-hire at some point. Instead of engaging in the go nowhere cycle of hire and fire, take these steps to rehabilitating your mis-hires and review your hiring practices to make sure you avoid hiring another lemon later on.

Make them a follower
Every leader needs followers and who better to be a follower than an employee who has no ability to be a leader within your company. Followers keep the leaders within your company from engaging in a power struggle by allowing each leader to have the workforce that will allow ideas to come to fruition.

Let them do the busy work you were avoiding
People hate sitting around doing nothing. The same goes for your mis-hires. They’d rather sit at their desk doing busy work than sit around and spin in their chair. That makes them the employee of choice to do those time consuming tasks that take up the time of your best performing employees.

Train them with incentives
Have you ever thought about implementing incentives to encourage your worst employees? These incentives are nowhere near the rewards you give your best employees, but they can consist of letting your employee go home thirty minutes early once they completed their tasks, or letting them sit out of the mind-numbing financial meeting as long as they complete their sales graphs without extensive help.

Give them a Mentor
Although you and your employees may not have hit it off with your mis-hire, another leader in the company who doesn’t know their lack of work ethic may hit it off better. A mentor can encourage the mis-hire to better themselves and inspire them to change how they engage with your team

Identify their Strengths
Maybe your mis-hire really isn’t a bad employee, but they are just bad at their job. Their strengths simply don’t align with what they were hired to do. Therefore, find them a job within the company that does align with their strengths. Introduce them to other people within the company and reinforce them that it is okay to leave your team to join another team. 

Review Your Hiring Techniques
Albert Einstein famously defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. If you continue to use the same hiring techniques you are going to continue to hire the same bad lemons. That’s why companies are increasingly beginning to hire outside recruiters: to add another layer of screening to filter out bad candidates. Not only do recruiters allow another layer of screening, but they are able to get you passive candidates that are already high achievers. Recruiters get you invested candidates who turn into invested employees.

There is a Solution
Don’t lose hope if you hired a lemon. Bad employees can often be rehabilitated to become your best achievers and future leaders within the organization. However, this comes with a warning. Too many lemons will come at a cost.

That is why companies invest so much in getting their hiring practices right. DCAProsearch has proven time and time again with our hires that the right employee can increase profits, productivity, and morale of the entire office. Companies have recognized that our recruiters get it right. That is why we boast a 92.8% repeat business and referral rate for the quality of our work. Stop hiring lemons and start hiring a recruiter to lower your chances of ending up with a lemon.