Monday, December 30, 2013
Recruit people carefully or you might end up regret
A friend of mine complained to me about her idiotic colleague few days ago. She’s the HR executive in her company. This idiot is a loner in the office due to his unique characteristics – tai chi master, boastful (quite extreme, according to her), childish, loves to laugh at people’s weaknesses, love to stalk people's FB and other things you would expect from an idiot.
To be honest, I pity her because I have quite a similar experience as well.
I then threw her one question “Why don’t you find a way to force him out?”
She replied “My colleagues and I have tried isolating him. But he’s still the same! Our HR policy does not allow us to terminate someone due to their idiotic behavior. And so far, he didn’t do anything which is against the policy of the company (aka misconduct).”
She’s right. If there’s such an employee in your company who doesn’t do anything against the policy of the company and still do his job (pretty good too), there’s no good reason for you to terminate him unless you want the company reputation to go down the drain.
But the fact that this guy is bothering nearly every single employee (except the bosses) in my friend’s company doesn’t help either. I’ve seen such cases before in my previous companies and the idiots actually left soon after the isolation. Guess the case with my friend’s company is that the idiot does not want to leave. There are already few good people who left because of him and this is not good for the company.
And to be honest with you, I can’t think of anything to handle this guy – except for isolation from colleagues and if possible, bosses.
Maybe that’s why people always say prevention is better than cure. Always recruit people carefully. It’s true that it’s never easy to recruit good people, but I feel that it’s even harder NOT to recruit idiots. Reference checks? Those are useful but they are not 100% accurate. But it’s better than nothing at all.
If I were the boss, I will take in an average guy as my new employee rather than an idiot – all the time. No point ruining the spirit of the entire company because of one person.
Remember, no one person is bigger than the company.
To be honest, I pity her because I have quite a similar experience as well.
I then threw her one question “Why don’t you find a way to force him out?”
She replied “My colleagues and I have tried isolating him. But he’s still the same! Our HR policy does not allow us to terminate someone due to their idiotic behavior. And so far, he didn’t do anything which is against the policy of the company (aka misconduct).”
She’s right. If there’s such an employee in your company who doesn’t do anything against the policy of the company and still do his job (pretty good too), there’s no good reason for you to terminate him unless you want the company reputation to go down the drain.
But the fact that this guy is bothering nearly every single employee (except the bosses) in my friend’s company doesn’t help either. I’ve seen such cases before in my previous companies and the idiots actually left soon after the isolation. Guess the case with my friend’s company is that the idiot does not want to leave. There are already few good people who left because of him and this is not good for the company.
And to be honest with you, I can’t think of anything to handle this guy – except for isolation from colleagues and if possible, bosses.
Maybe that’s why people always say prevention is better than cure. Always recruit people carefully. It’s true that it’s never easy to recruit good people, but I feel that it’s even harder NOT to recruit idiots. Reference checks? Those are useful but they are not 100% accurate. But it’s better than nothing at all.
If I were the boss, I will take in an average guy as my new employee rather than an idiot – all the time. No point ruining the spirit of the entire company because of one person.
Remember, no one person is bigger than the company.
Labels: careers
just my 2cents at 4:16 PM |
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