New hire interviewed well but can't do the job
Candidates who ace interviews often fail to deliver independently or follow standard procedures once deadlines get tight. Because managers skip short paid trials or early performance checkpoints, they end up second-guessing their initial doubts. This hesitation causes them to waste months training the wrong person before finally letting them go.
What the numbers show
Counted from the threads quoted below. How we count
- This comes up 186.5× more often in r/Entrepreneur than across the site as a whole.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1Giving candidates a small, paid trial task to observe how they actually work before making an offer.Did this help you?
- 2Writing a day-30 checkpoint with concrete must-haves on day one to make termination decisions objective rather than emotional.Did this help you?
- 3Documenting the operational process and creating written checklists before hiring anyone to take over the tasks.Did this help you?
- 4Writing strict, step-by-step Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) or checklists to eliminate any need for deduction.Did this help you?
- 5Using a temp-to-hire labor or staffing agency to test workers out before officially hiring them.Did this help you?
- 6Hiring based entirely on a candidate's attitude and general curiosity rather than their past experience.Did this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“At least for me, having doubts this early on always meant I hired the wrong person. Each time I ended up letting them go later after wasting way too much much time.”source ↗
“I really just hired him because I was kind of in a rush to hire someone for this role, and he was the best pick of them all... Now that I'm training him in, he seems (to put it bluntly) dumb.”source ↗
“We printed up a SOP for him to follow, he didn't follow it. He had to go.”source ↗
“I've hired in a rush before and it usually bites back, so next time I'd take one more day to decide.”source ↗
“(I've done that in the past and it's just led to a lot of disappointment on my part, lots of wasted time hiring the wrong ppl)”source ↗
“Yeah, he already didn't follow it after I showed it to him today...he's on probation in my head right now ...”source ↗
“A bad hire becomes obvious around week two or three, but without a checkpoint you second-guess yourself into month four.”source ↗
“I hired someone who interviewed like a TED Talk but delivered like a community theater understudy who hadn't seen the script”source ↗
“I hired someone who interviewed brilliantly and then couldn't get anything done without being told every single step.”source ↗
“Mine was hiring for enthusiasm over a proven track record and then skipping a short paid trial. The work looked fine in interviews. The follow-through fell apart once deadlines got tight.”source ↗
“we had the classic tale of somebody who looked great on paper, aced the interviews (2, both with two employees involved) but couldn't deliver.”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 13Is it normal to have no training or supervision on a new job?
- 5Is it normal to have no work to do at a new job?
- 4Doing manager work without the title
- 5Why do hiring managers reject qualified candidates over superficial things?
- 4How to deal with an unqualified employee who is impossible to fire
- 4Found a mistake on my resume after submitting the job application