A panic hire is what happens when somebody quits, their work lands back on your desk, and you hire the first person who’s available and willing just to make the pain stop. You avoid it by building a business where one person walking out the door doesn’t turn into an emergency, so you can take the time to hire well.
Why does one person quitting turn into a crisis?
When someone leaves, the work doesn’t leave with them. It rolls back to you. You went from doing the job yourself, to handing it off, to doing it again, except now you’re also running everything else.
You start asking how you can find somebody to do this job, and then you catch yourself and think, no wait, how do I find somebody good to do this job. Then the pile gets tall enough that you stop asking the second question. Somebody’s in front of you, they can do it, they seem fine, and you plug them in. That’s the trap.
How common are bad hires, really?
Common enough that you should stop feeling alone about it. In CareerBuilder research, 74 percent of employers surveyed said they’d recently hired at least one bad employee. When they got pushed on why, a third of them said the person was actually fine, but they’d had to hurry up and hire somebody because they needed the job done.
That’s not a talent problem. That’s a timing problem. So if you’ve been beating yourself up about somebody who didn’t work out, look at how fast you had to move. The speed probably made the call for you.
Does slowing down actually help you hire better?
It does, and there’s a cheap way to prove it. Research from Robert Half found you can cut your applicant pool by about a third just by calling references. You pick up the phone and ask whether Bob Jones actually worked there between the dates on his application.
People pad resumes. Applying for a job takes one click now, so you’re getting flooded, and some of what’s in that pile isn’t true. A reference call takes ten minutes and it removes a third of the noise. It also tells you something about character, because you don’t want somebody on your team who wasn’t straight with you before they even started.
How long will a good candidate wait to hear from you?
Not long. Good candidates won’t wait around for weeks while you get back to them and start a real conversation. After a couple of weeks they’ve moved on.
So this is the balance you’re managing. Move fast enough that good people don’t disappear, but not so fast that you skip the checks that keep a bad hire out. The only real way to win that trade is to stop letting the clock start in a panic.
What can you do right now to prevent a panic hire?
Four things.
First, cross-train your team. Take one day a month and have everybody learn enough about everybody else’s job to be dangerous. When a person leaves, the team can carry the load with a little prompting instead of dropping it on you.
Second, cross-train yourself. You don’t have to be the best in the world at what each person does. But if Bob leaves and you have no idea what Bob did, that’s owner malpractice. Know enough to step in.
Third, build relationships with subcontractors before you need them. You need to have met Sally at a networking event so you can call her about a ninety-day retainer the week your marketing person quits.
Fourth, get out of the office, pour yourself a glass of whatever you like, and spend ninety minutes going through every person on your team. What do they do, what would have to keep happening if they left, and who do you already know that you could tap on the shoulder? If you get to a role and can’t name a single person, that’s your networking assignment for the next month.
Questions owners ask
What exactly is a panic hire?
A panic hire is a hiring decision driven by how much the open work hurts rather than by whether the candidate is right. If you’d have said no to this person with three more months of runway, it’s a panic hire.
Isn’t it worse to leave a position open?
Usually not. An open seat costs you time and stress, and you can see the cost. A wrong hire costs you money, team morale, customer relationships, and then the whole hiring process again.
What if I’m a solo owner with no team yet?
Then the subcontractor list is your version of this. Know three people you’d call for the work you’d hand off first, before you’re desperate enough to hire whoever answers.
Watch the full episode of Businessing with Pat Miller.
Here’s the homework. Block ninety minutes this week and write down every person on your team, what they do, and who you’d call if they left tomorrow. That one document is the difference between an opening and an emergency. If you want a room full of owners who’ve been through the same thing, the Small Business Owners Community is owners only and $9 a month.