Employee turnover costs businesses a lot. When a staff member leaves, it takes a lot of time and money to review resumes, interview candidates, train the new staff member, and then help them get up to speed.
So, there’s nothing worse than going through that laborious process only to find out you made a mistake, and your best move is to let them go and start the entire process over.
Ugh!
As a business owner for the last 14 years, I’ve done my fair share of hiring over the years. We have a pretty rigorous process of screening resumes and cover letters, phone interviews, and in-person interviews with multiple staff. But even with all that, we’ve still had a couple of occasions where we’ve made hiring mistakes.
I don’t know that anyone gets hiring right 100% of the time.
But, with our latest hire, we tried something new. It’s an idea Seth Godin advocates in his book Linchpin. In a recent interview, Jason Fried said they do this at 37 Signals as well.
Try Before You Buy… a New Member of Your Team
Last month, after an extensive search for a “web apps developing linchpin” and going through the interview process, we thought Richard Ward was the right person for the job. But before we offered him a permanent position, we asked him to do a one week software development project for us.
During that week, I had the opportunity to get to know Richard a lot better. I got to see him firsthand take a set of requirements and created a working application. I got to see firsthand how he responded to changes and constructive criticism. I got to see firsthand how he interacted with the rest of the staff.
That one week project provided confirmation of what we learned about Richard during the interview process.
There were a couple of potential issues I noticed during the project, but this extra step also gave me the opportunity to discuss them with Richard when I offered him the permanent position, and set-up a review 1 month down the road to make sure he’s headed down the right path right from the get-go.
This was my first experience with a one-week trial project, and I would highly recommend it. A bad hire is bad for your business and bad for person you hire, and this is a great way to reduce the chances of that happening.
Have you ever done a 1 week trial project before bringing a new staff member on permanently? If so, did you find it helpful? If not, will you try it in the future?
Contract-to-hire does well too especially since the employee is being paid during that time plus a lot of projects can’t be done in one week. This can give more time for this evaluation but yes, does cost a little bit more.
Also, during these economic times there’s a lot of good people who would jump at doing a week’s trial in an effort to get a job however when the economy stabilizes – you’ll be trying to attract people who are already employed and a one week trial isn’t really feasible for them and a lot of the times, they’re the ones you really want.
Just my $0.02.
Thanks Courtney! Good points.
Great idea. The reverse is also true. It gives the candidate the chance to evaluate you as an employer they want to work for. It’s a win win!
-mike.
Exactly!
As the person being mentioned in this blog entry, I definitely agree. This was my first experience doing a one week project for an employer as well, and it was certainly a unique and rewarding experience.
The “trial period” gave me the chance to view the inner workings of the organization I was interested in working for and provided further confirmation that the organization would be a perfect fit for the kind of position I was searching for.
Hey Richard, thanks for stopping by to comment. Great to have you on the OurChurch.com team!