Kevin Surace says CEOs should assess new hires in their first 2-3 weeks and let them go quickly if they don't fit, rather than hoping they'll improve. In sales especially, 30-50% of new hires fail because they're good at selling themselves, not the product. The hardest part isn't the decision itself, it's accepting that a promising person won't help you reach your goals.
I fire too slowly because I'm attached to people. And if I could talk to my younger self better, I would say hire the best you can, interview the best you can, and within 2 or 3 weeks, you kind of know if it's a great fit or not. And if it isn't, unless you want to be an educational institution, which is a different thing, but if you're not an educational institution, they're going to be happier somewhere else and you're going to be happier finding another person because it's not going to work. And not everyone's going to work. It's ridiculous to think you are. You know, normally if you hire in sales, if you did really well, you only got rid of a third of them, right? And cycled them around. If you're really great hirer, and I doubt you're that good. So it might be 50%. And then what happens is you blame yourself. You say, how is it that half the salespeople I hire, even though I've interviewed them, they're not the right people? Well, because they're very good at selling you. We don't know if they're good at selling your product, and you won't know till they get here. So I think it's the hardest part of the job is letting people go. Real hardest part of the job is when people have gotten you here but probably won't get you there.
