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Firms that hire experienced people do not usually get what they expect or are paying for. Here is a template to help you maximize your investment in such people.
Usually, but not always, experienced people leave a job because they are not growing in their experience. Yet many firms hire these people expecting to capitalize on their “experience.” This makes no sense and seems to be illogical. However, it happens all the time. The following is a template to assist you in getting what you need or think you are getting.
Salary level: The salary you will be paying will be the market rate. Not much higher or much lower, so regardless of what you are getting from your new employee, get over it! You will not be overpaying. You might not be getting what you think you are paying for, but you will be paying the market rate for that person.
Profile of new hire: You hired someone who has been specializing in the area that you hired them for. You also hired someone that probably had three or four jobs previously, with the last one or two (or more) in that specialization. What you do not know is the depth of their experience, how well they managed their workload or the people reporting to them, and what desire they have to grow further. If they had that desire, and they weren’t growing, then they “wasted” time in their growth trajectory trying to decide when they should leave. Further, their impression of their experience will not be the same as your expectations of their experience. Get over it!
Experience: I can almost guarantee that the new hire will not be able to perform at the level you expect them to, and my advice is to get over it. What you need to do is to evaluate their experience and figure out where they stand on the curve line of the scale that you expect. Not where you want them to be, but where they actually are. Once you figure that out, start your training and mentoring and everything else you do to move that staff person forward at the level they are at on your scale.
Getting what you are paying for: You will be not getting what you really need, but what the market has available. And whatever that is, you will likely be better off with that person than without that person, if you do not screw it up.
How to not screw it up: Do not give them work that you know they could not handle without training, supervising, and being watched over closely. Start off with pretty easy work at a higher level, not the lower levels, and see how they do. Use that to guide you in where they need to go to help you. Go easy, but do it with steady forward movements. But do it slowly and deliberately. Consider your investment in a long-term relationship with that manager-level person. If they are the right person, it will become evident within a couple of months. If they’re not the right person, get rid of them quickly (see next item).
Hire carefully, but fire quickly: I know of a very successful practice that used a headhunter for staffing and was provided with a two-month guarantee, so their timetable was seven weeks. I know this because someone who left me for a higher-level position called and asked me if he could have his job back seven weeks after he left. That person was not growing with me (for various reasons that I am not getting into now) and I told him so. We liked him and explained a program that we developed to have him grow sufficiently. He immediately started to look for a job, which he got. His job was filled by us with a three-year level staff person we hired out of school and who was ready to be moved up to that position. We did not miss a beat. That shows you how “valuable” he was to us, and how invaluable he was to his next employer.
Be nice: It’s probably not all their own fault they haven’t grown. I’m sure the firms they worked at contributed immensely to that lack of growth. Be nice. Do not tell them how you feel about where you think they are on your scale of development or what your current expectations are. Just focus on using them to move you forward by helping them grow. Compliment them frequently and never disparage them. Be nice!
The past, present and future: Their lack of experience is in the past and is the present situation. Fuggeddaboudit! You hired this person so you could move your practice forward into the future. Focus on that future and getting there as easily as you can. You can do it with this person if you do not over-anticipate their ability or over-expect their output and production.
Natural tendency: A natural tendency is to be upset with them and then to use them as best you can to clean up past due work, move things out and work on slightly higher lower-level engagements. You won’t be anxious to have them train anyone so they will become lone rangers. That is not how you will be able to grow and you will doom yourself to restart with someone very similar when that person leaves “because they are not getting good experience.” And then you will start over with someone who is a mirror image of the person who just left you. Your efforts become dissipated replacing someone who left rather than concentrate on nurturing staff so they will grow and stay.
Set expectations to a lower level: When they start, do not expect more of them than is realistic. If you get more than you expect, you will be happy. If you get less than you expect, you will be miserable and probably make them, and everyone else around you, miserable. You can’t lose with lower expectations and might lose with the higher expectations. Choose can’t lose instead of might lose.
The above is not really a template, but if I added three lines to each item and asked you to write what you think or will do and perhaps include a chart (for No. 3 above), it will be a template. Figure it out for yourself, but if you believe I make sense and you are stuck in a can’t win position unless you face reality, then get over it and make the best of it to move forward. And I just showed you how to approach that.
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