It happens to every employer at one time or another. Despite a solid application and a great interview, your new hire isn’t working out. Maybe they don’t have the abilities listed so prominently in the skills section of their resume. Perhaps they’re brewing toxic gossip over coffee on unassigned breaks in the break room. Whether it’s a performance problem or a personality challenge, the fact remains: you made a bad hire.

And now you need to take steps to get back on track.

Acknowledging a bad hire is difficult because the hiring process is costly. You’ve wasted money and resources bringing an individual on board—and now you must go back to the drawing board.

Take these savvy steps to recover from a bad hire—and prevent it from happening again:

• Find the problem. Before you take action, figure out what went wrong in the hiring process. Is it a process problem or a people problem? Did the new hire misrepresent their skills and experience on their resume? Or were the responsibilities of the job not made clear during the interview process? Maybe red flags were overlooked or steps were missed. Once you determine the problem, it will be easier to decide whether the employment relationship can be salvaged—or not.
• Do damage control. Sometimes a bad hire is the result of an honest mistake. The employee was truthful about their skills and is doing their best, but they’re struggling with one aspect of their role. Perhaps they’re a great cultural fit, and you don’t want to lose them—especially in this tough hiring market. In that case, perhaps targeted feedback and follow-up, reassignment, or more training is a good option.
• Compare costs and benefits. Sometimes you don’t realize an individual’s negative impact on the team—or the organization—until you remove them. Are co-workers compensating for one individual’s underperformance? Is morale suffering? Is there an unbridgeable gap between performance expectations and ability? It can be a difficult call to make, but sometimes the cost of keeping an employee outweighs the benefits of letting them go.

Use Pre-Employment Screening to Make More Strategic Hires

Using background screening services like Metrodata Services can help you improve your hiring process—and reduce the risk of a bad hire. We can help you verify the data provided by your potential candidates so you’ll be able to bring trustworthy, reliable hires on board. With our help, you’ll be able to identify candidates with the experience, skills, work ethic, and values to be an asset to your team. Learn more about our pre-employment screening services—and make better hires—today!