do I have to hire an employee who went scorched earth after she left?

A reader writes:

I am a senior administrator, with a team of 10. Most of the positions that I supervise are entry level, a lot of recent college grads. I am happy to have these folks on my team and enjoy mentoring them. Generally, I expect people to stay in this role for 2-5 years before advancing to a different department or a different company, sometimes a different field altogether.

Last year, a woman who had been working on my team for five years, Milly, let me know that she was looking for a new job with more growth. I encouraged her and said that I was happy to help however I could and to serve as a reference. She was generally a good employee. While she needed a lot of coaching on professional norms and communication, I expect that in this role, and she had shown growth in her time here.

A few months later, Milly went to my grandboss with a litany of complaints about me and the job, none of which she had ever brought up to me in any way. He referred the issue to my direct supervisor, and we met to discuss her concerns. Many of them had to do with confusion around exempt vs non-exempt employees. At the time, we put some things in place to help with some of her biggest complaints around scheduling and communication.

A few months later she quit, and on her way out she went full scorched earth on me to my direct supervisor. There were dozens of complaints about me, my team, and the department, most of which were objectively and demonstrably not true. Several were things that I could easily prove were simply fabrications.

I certainly have growth areas, but many of her complaints were things that I’ve never heard from anyone I’ve managed in 20 years of management. That said, I really sat with all the feedback and tried to lift out what was true. I processed it with my supervisor (who I have a great relationship with). I made some structural changes that I think have really helped our team (including clarifying roles and lines of communication) that were probably overdue. Things are good. Recent reviews and surveys indicate that the team is happy.

That was six months ago. I am now hiring for a recently created position that is a middle management position. This position and I will work very closely together. Shortly after the position was posted publicly, Milly applied for it.

How do I proceed with this hiring process in a way that is fair? Before she left, I probably would have considered her for this role, but would have had reservations about her communication and professionalism. Those reservations have only increased since she left since I’ve also learned some things since she left that demonstrate questionable judgment in her previous role.

I have a committee that will help with the hiring, so it won’t be down to me alone, but ultimately I will have the final say on who we hire. I think it’s unlikely that Milly will emerge as a top candidate, although she does have some good friends who will be part of that process. I want to give her a fair chance, but I also can’t imagine working so closely with someone who said such awful things about me. I also worry that if she is not selected it may look like retaliation. What is the best way for me to proceed?

You can just say no. You don’t need to meet some outside standard of objectivity where you pretend that you don’t have the knowledge about Milly that you do have, or where you assess her the way you would if you had never worked together.

It is completely normal for a manager to consider what they know about a candidate from working with them previously and to decide, based on that experience, that they don’t want to hire them again, and not to advance them in the hiring process as a result. You don’t need to go through the charade of interviewing her; that’s a waste of your time and her time. And really, offering her an interview out of “fairness” sends her a message that’s strangely out of sync with the reality of the situation, which is that if you tell a bunch of lies as you leave a job, you’ve burned that bridge and that manager isn’t going to want to rehire you later.

(Frankly, it’s bizarre that Milly applied for the position at all, if she realizes that you’re the manager of it! Which might be further illustration that her judgment is weird, which you already knew.)

Even though you’re part of a hiring committee, if you’re the manager for the open position, you are on very solid ground in saying, “I worked with Milly in the past, we did not work together well, and I am not interested in bringing her back.” It would be highly unusual for the rest of the hiring committee to push back on that as long as you’re known to have good judgment, but if you need to enlist your manager in backing you up, do. If anything, I’d think your manager would be surprised to learn you’re even considering interviewing her!

You said that you’re worried not hiring her will look retaliation, but it’s not retaliation to factor in firsthand knowledge of a former employee. It’s an expected and natural outcome.

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