If you’re in charge of hiring for a company — whether it’s your own or someone else’s — you’ll probably find a friend that wants you to hire them. Make sure you have a personal policy in place before that happens.
Photo by Parker Knight.
As advice site The Muse points out, hiring your friends can quickly turn bad if you’re not careful. Friends can take advantage of your previous relationship instead of treating you like a boss. You can have a harder time firing your friend if they’re doing a poor job. Your special relationship with that person can influence how your other employees perceive you. Even in a small company you started yourself, it can be tough to get over that hurdle. In some cases, you may want to nuke that possibility altogether:
Avoid that awful outcome entirely by telling your pal from the start that you value his friendship so highly that you don’t want anything to jeopardize it. Per discounting your work, it’s helpful if you make a blanket policy so that your contact doesn’t feel like it’s personal — and so you don’t have to have this awkward conversation all the time.
Of course, sometimes you may be comfortable hiring friends and that’s a decision that only you can make. It’s still helpful to have a policy in place, though. Maybe that policy means never hiring friends, or maybe it means friends will always report to someone else in the company. Maybe you’ll just establish some ground rules with them before they’re hired. No matter what your rules are, having them in place before you hire someone shows that you take the matter seriously.
5 Awkward Professional Situations Your Friends Will Put You In — and How to Handle Each One [The Muse]
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