Hire The Right People To Bolster Your Business (And Let Go Of The Ones Who Don’t)

Every company is driven by people. When you first start your own business and need to expand your workforce quickly, it’s tempting to hire the first decent person that walks through the door or take on an individual that isn’t asking for too much money. But the important thing to remember is that hiring the right people can elevate your businesses to new heights. One startup investor has some advice about recruitment and why you shouldn’t hesitate to let go of people who don’t fit into your business.

Angel investor and startup mentor Nick Bell said one of the biggest lessons he learned as an entrepreneur is to hire the right people. He wrote in Startup Smart:

“It is absolutely fundamental to the growth of your business that you surround yourself with talented, intelligent people who share your work philosophy — don’t reduce yourself to paying peanuts for monkeys.”

If you’ve hired people who aren’t quite fitting into the business, it can be difficult to let them go. You don’t want to put anybody out of a job all of a sudden and the process can then drag out for a while before you officially get rid of them. But Bell encourages business owners to be a bit ruthless in that regard:

“When I first established WME, I hired people for key positions who simply weren’t the right fit for the role. They lacked experience and drive and they did not match the dynamic personality and the sharp vision behind my business. I learnt that you need to know when to cut your losses, and to do so without hesitation.
 
In all my time as a businessman, I have never regretted letting anyone go.”

This is something that Apple CEO Tim Cook knows all too well. Speaking to The Washington Post, he recounted the time he had to quickly let someone go:

“I hired the wrong person for retail [former Dixons CEO John Browett] initially. That was clearly a screw-up. I’m not saying anything bad about him. He didn’t fit here culturally is a good way to describe it. We all talked to him, and I made the final decision, and it was wrong. We fairly quickly recognized it and made a change. And I’m proud we did that. A lot of companies would have said, ‘Oh, he hasn’t been here very long’. But when you’re looking at more time with [then] 50,000 people in retail — that’s a lot of people that you’re affecting in the wrong way. That was a mistake.”

You can read more of Bell’s advice to businesses over at StartUp Smart.

[Via StartUp Smart]