Disappointing New Hire

Have you ever been in a position to make a hiring decision? How did it work out?

I recently had an opportunity to do so. You see, the director of a group I'm working with asked me to sit in on an interview because he had no expertise in the relevant area. We were interviewing people to work with me and hopefully replace me (because I'm only with the group temporarily).

Well, he quit 2 days later, and didn't give 2 weeks notice. And it turned out we had a deadline to make a decision on who to hire the next day. There wasn't really time to interview more candidates.

Now when I interviewed this lady, she was a bit older, but she sure seemed very competent. She brought an extensive portfolio with her of all the projects she had worked on in her entire career. It was very extensive. I couldn't help but be impressed.

And yet, she didn't listen very well. And she was a chatterbox. Big time. I'd ask her a question, and she wouldn't really answer it. She'd begin by talking about something somewhat related to the topic of the question, but then would verbally meander into talking about whatever she felt like talking about. I was kind of concerned about this at the time. So was the director. We agreed that we weren't ready to say no to her, but we wanted to see some more candidates.

But in the end, seeing more candidates wasn't possible without it costing a considerable additional amount of money. There was a contractor who was supplying candidates, and they had to do so on a timeline, so extending that timeline meant more resources on their part, which meant more money on our part.

So the easiest thing to do was to hire the person we interviewed. I chose to focus on her portfolio and all the things she brought to the table. Ok, she wasn't a good communicator, but we didn't need her to communicate, we needed her to do more technical work.

So I assured the director's temporary replacement that this candidate was going to work out just fine.

Big mistake. That whole not listening part turns out to be ridiculously important. I can't TELL you how annoying it is to tell someone to do something, and they agree to it, but then they just...don't...and proceed to do whatever they want to do. If I were in charge, I would have fired her already, and she's only been there a week.

And there was one more red flag in her interview. You may recall that I said in previous posts that I'm involved with SharePoint. Well, this candidate had a LOT of SharePoint experience, since the time when SharePoint first came out. But she really thinks of herself as a technical writer, specializing in documenting processes, standard operating procedures, writing out step by step instructions with screen shots, etc. It was right there on the top of her resume in the summary: technical writer seeking challenging technical writing role...

So I asked her about that in the interview, and she downplayed the significance of it. I was satisfied with this because she had so much SharePoint experience. I told her about the job, essentially managing a SharePoint database, and she was fine with it. It seemed like a good fit, even if it wasn't her dream job.

So when she finally started, I told her that long term, we wanted her to document all the procedures involved in managing the database from the SharePoint side of things. But first, obviously, she needs to learn to manage the database.

Well.

She doesn't listen when I give her tasks related to managing the database. I'm so severely over tasked, I've had to just give her assignments to do and send her away and hope that she does them. She agrees to do them, seems to understand what she needs to do, and all seems well.

After what should be three times as much time as the assignment should take, I finally get a chance to follow up, and nothing, NOTHING is done.

What happened?

Well, she called the new director and set up a meeting with him - without even ASKING me, even though I'm training her to do my job - and started doing all kinds of tasks for him. Apparently he doesn't realize that she's there to take stuff off my plate so that I can return to my ACTUAL job. I'm just working with this group temporarily.

I ended up having to stay at work until 11pm the other day to do the work I was counting on her to do which she hadn't done.

Oddly enough, when I found out that she had scheduled this meeting, I emailed her and said that I wanted her to finish the tasks I had given her before she did anything for the summit director. She said she would. She didn't.

Like I said, if it were me, I'd have fired her already. I have no patience for this kind of nonsense. AT ALL.

So some advice for those just getting into the corporate world for the first time after leaving the ministry. Do what you're told. Make sure you understand what you were told to do, then do it as quickly and accurately as possible. Know exactly who you report to, and who you need to please to get ahead.

This new hire is not my asset. I am not her manager. Her job isn't to please me, it's to please the new director.

So what do I do to handle this situation? Well, I won't complain to the director. If he can't see what he's doing, then either he doesn't understand the situation or he's too wrapped up in his own self interests to care. He hasn't asked me what the roles should be.

So I'm just going to secretly conspire with some other folks to get my work covered so I can make an exit. Sometimes that's how you have to get things done.

Once these roles are sort of established, then I'll talk to the director and tell him it's time I move on to other projects. If I try to have that conversation with him now, I'm afraid he'll just object and try to keep me indefinitely. That's what I would do if I were him. I need to be able to demonstrate that they no longer need me before I can even propose this to him.

It's possible that I could just sit down and have a talk with him, but I don't feel like he's trustworthy at this point. He's shown an unwillingness to understand (or even care) how much work goes into satisfying his whims. So I don't trust him. If I lay out all my cards, then I'm vulnerable to him and risk being unable to get out before April.

Nope - I'm not claiming to be dispensing God's answer to this problem. It's just what I'm doing, what I'm thinking.