how soon can you tell if someone isn’t cut out for the job?

A reader writes:

My organization has to go through a long, complicated rigamarole to get a position approved, followed by multiple steps to interview and hire a new employee. From the day a staffer leaves to when we get a replacement typically takes anywhere from two months to a year. To boot, there are times when there is a very limited applicant pool. These two factors together mean that once we get a new employee in the door, admin can be very insistent we make it all work. In some cases we manage a good hire and luxuriate in a functional, (finally) fully-staffed workplace, but at other times, we find ourselves saddled with someone who, we quickly see, is frankly unsuitable for the position they were hired for. Think: a coordinator for children’s programming who is visibly fearful of children and opts to look at the floor and pretend to be invisible when they need to be interacting with caregivers. When we’ve reported our concerns, HR must have told managers “you need to coach these new employees along and make it work, otherwise you’re going to be down a staffer for at least a year” because these problem employees were retained and we were told, “We need to give them more time to learn their job duties.”

It seems to me, there are tasks, processes, and systems that can be learned, and then there are attitudes, aptitudes, and core competencies that can’t be taught and should therefore be dealbreakers when it comes to retaining an employee. It was obvious to staff almost immediately that our children’s programmer was not good with their job’s target population, and it has been apparent in about three weeks in that a least one other had trouble taking initiative, learning key work duties, prioritizing tasks, and managing their time. The latter squeaked through their probationary period and is now sadly cemented into our organization. With the children’s programmer, staff keep begging management to just let them go, but HR stonewalls, saying it takes time to learn a new position and we owe this newbie a fair shot.

What can and can’t you teach to new employees, and how long should you keep a trainee before calling it a day and letting them go?

There definitely are some things that can be learned or taught (for example, a specific software or process) and others that can’t typically be taught in the amount of time that a manager can reasonably invest (often including things like critical thinking, meticulousness, and initiative).

It also can matter how fundamental the skill is to the role. You might be able to help someone improve their writing skills to an acceptable level for a role where writing isn’t a central focus, but the level of writing skill that you need for, say, speech-writing is really hard to teach if someone isn’t starting out with some natural talent.

And while you can often build people’s knowledge and improve specific skills, it’s very hard to change fundamental talents and basic inclinations. For example, let’s say you have an employee who is great at most of her work but occasionally has to give presentations and, when she does, she lacks polish and tends to read directly from her slides. That’s a case where public speaking training could pay off. But on the other hand, if you have a media director who struggles with judgment, the ability to think on her feet, and basic critical thinking skills, that person is probably never going to perform at the level you need, even if coaching produces some small improvements. I’d put a children’s programmer who’s visibly afraid of kids in that second category; that goes to the fundamental skills and inclinations needed for the role, and that is indeed a mismatch that you could indeed spot very early. There’s some advice here about what to do when that happens — but ultimately if it’s clear they’re not going to work out, it’s kinder to everyone not to drag it out.

Related:
how long should it take a new hire to get up to speed?

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