NAME : NISHAT TASNIM

ID : 1211007030

Hire Slow, Fire Fast

For the entire presentation and report, I have chosen a particular topic from the chapter titled Personality and Values and that is: Person- Job fit. From my perspective, it is an important topic to work on because it reflects the impact of an individuals personality on his job performance. Linking an individuals personality to the type of job he undergoes is one of the most crucial parts of hiring- often ignored by the top level managers and recruiters.

The article I worked on was collected from Harvard Business Review, dated March 3, 2014. The author was Greg McKeown and it titled, HIRE SLOW, FIRE FAST. The author claimed that the leaders have the tendency to hire fast and fire slow where it had to be just the opposite. In most cases employers hire in a hurry with the urge to fill the new roles and a bias for speed combined with the high growth drives. They simply put emphasis on skills and competence rather than focusing on a candidates personality trait. Later when it is necessary to fire any underperforming employee, they are too slow either because they are busy or they want to avoid the unpleasant firing conversation. The article has an example of a company, Silicon Valley, which had a massive lay-off due to its hiring wrong persons during its undisciplined growth. Later on it became a 700-person company with more than a billion dollars of annual revenue by taking corrective actions and careful organizational design. The CEO along with her 35 executives followed slow and effective hiring process triggered by a fast firing process. The author argued that for three reasons this approach is more compassionate than the alternatives. First, it serves the world economy with healthy, growing companies capable of sticking around for the long run rather than bureaucratic companies that will slowly die. Second, it isnt compassionate to keep one person, rather it emphasizes the overall success of a team as a whole. Third, it creates the way to get the right person for the right job. The tagline of this point is, trying to force someone to be something they are not is neither sustainable nor humane.

NAME : NISHAT TASNIM

ID : 1211007030

The hire slow, fire fast, process start by being absurdly selective in who is hired. This enables the employer not only to focus on the job skill related issues, but also put emphasis on the candidates personality to achieve the natural fit for the particular job. For instance, Mark Adams, the MD of Vitso (a furniture collection), approaches hiring with incredible selectivity. In addition to multiple interviews, he and his team have prospective employees come and work with them for a day see each other as naturally as possible. This complex process might get criticized by lots of candidates and there may occur shortage of possible candidate pool. But Mark believes it is better to be shorthanded than to hire the wrong person. At the end of the article, the author has put emphasis on taking the firing decision rapidly and wisely. From his point of view, where the problem is a basic personality clash, endless rounds of feedback and a painful performance improvement plan is not the solution. The writer ended the article by urging that the firing process should be humane and as friendly as possible.

The article reflects the concept that only skill and competence are not the only things that bring in efficient job performance. For a job to be performed better, an employee has to be the natural fit for the job by his specific personality and specialty.