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5 aigns an employee wont make it

TheFORCE

5 Signs a New Employee Won't Make It in Your Company | Inc.com

Don't know if I agree with everything but it's good to know what HR people are looking for warning signs.

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Comments

SaSkiller

HR aren't looking for anything as far as I can tell. If they were we wouldn't see half the problems we do. Then again HR gets minimal time with a prospect.

DatabaseHead

Thanks for sharing, very interesting. We just had an employee who left a few weeks ago and they hit 4 out of the 5. They barely made it 9 months.

beads

@SaSkiller;

HR is very much like most of IT. You don't necessarily need a degree or formal training in the field in order to work in HR/IT in the first place. Most HR people are created because they were either recruited into the field after earning a BA or as my wife's number two... wait for it. She has a mechanical engineering degree, with PE (Professional Engineer) not just JIT from Northwestern University. Now, why she decided to go into HR is between her and Catbert as she's as much a people person as Goebbels in the 1940s. Simply an awful person to begin with. So, yes, there are many of those people in HR. Even SHRM.org tells its own members that 90 percent of them are terrible at what they do - HR.

At least the HR industry realizes they are in fact as bad as they are perceived. IT and Security could learn something there. Still, they are treated much the same by the rest of business as a whole because of the same reasons mentioned above.

The article appears to be spot on and the author shows a better CMM than most. Thanks for the link. Enjoyed it.

- b/eads

Remedymp

DatabaseHead wrote: »

Thanks for sharing, very interesting. We just had an employee who left a few weeks ago and they hit 4 out of the 5. They barely made it 9 months.

What happen in a nut shell?

TechGromit

#4 is something in my company some of the newer younger employees are guilty of. They been in a position two years or so and are already looking for a promotion, and it's not like they mastered the job they are in, in some cases they can barely fulfill the role they are doing now.

DatabaseHead

Remedymp wrote: »

What happen in a nut shell?

New gig, went from ~58,000 with 5% bonus to 80,000 with a 15% bonus.

alias454

So what you are saying is it payed off for them?

networker050184

TechGromit wrote: »

#4 is something in my company some of the newer younger employees are guilty of. They been in a position two years or so and are already looking for a promotion, and it's not like they mastered the job they are in, in some cases they can barely fulfill the role they are doing now.

I'd definitely except some kind of promotion or at least bump in pay in responsibility after two years as well. If not onto bigger and better things. Of course the ones not fulfilling their role are another story.

OctalDump

Interesting is how someone who is extremely good at what they do might tick a lot of those boxes. If they truly "can do it all" (and sometimes you are better than your colleagues), then they probably will start putting constraints on when/how things are done (knowing not to put the cart before the horse, prioritising work loads, saying no to nonsense requests), they probably will not waste time with people who don't matter, and soon enough would be looking to get out of that situation. So, yeah, they probably won't stick around but if well managed they could stay, and they could provide a lot of value.

I know of more than one case of people being let go because, fundamentally, they were too good.

I think these problems can also be caused by poor management - not defining roles, not understanding who you need to hire and who you have hired, communicating expectations, having systems/culture/process that allow people to work together effectively, etc etc etc. That second one - vocalize constraints around what they can do and when they can do it - is almost inevitable when you have bad management since you are basically forcing the worker to manage their own role, "No Karen, I can't look at your Excel issue right now. I was hired as a server engineer, not helpdesk, and I'm currently moving our Exchange stores to a new backend in preparation for an upgrade that needs to be completed today if email is going to keep working beyond Thursday. If I have some time at the end of the day, I can swing past and have a look."

Managing is hard. It really should be treated as a profession in its own right, but typically is given as a reward for doing well at a non-managerial role. "Hey, you are a really good tech. I think you should lead a team." "Hey, you've lead this technical team of likeminded people, how about leading this cross-functional, horizontal project." The irony is that it is probably harder managing people at those lower management levels. I'm guessing it's a lot easier to just say "Dave just isn't working out. So we'll get rid of him" than to figure out why Dave isn't working out and see if you can do something about it.

WafflesAndRootbeer

There is some truth to it, but IME, it's a double-edge sword.

1. Many IT jobs expect you to do it all, even if you have no knowledge about whatever they assign you. This is the problem with out-sourcing things to MSPs, because those companies often hire the least-qualified people (and least expensive hires) to do the broadest range of services or they promise things to clients they cannot and should not deliver. I've been told many times that I am expected to perform duties outside the scope of my role and provide services on hardware and software that is well outside of my wheelhouse, even if I have no training whatsoever for those tasks. At this point in my life, I don't take any job where that is the case, though working in an area where MSPs/contracting is the norm means this is SOP, so I spend less time working and more time doing things I enjoy. Since I'm well-off and don't blow my money like most IT people do, I can do that with impunity.

2. I've seen employees who will try to schedule their work tasks around their personal errands and such. It sometimes goes/works well and sometimes it doesn't. I've seen a lot of people just be lazy and schedule their work assignments around their smoke breaks/favorite restaurants/time with SO, etc., etc, etc.. Many jobs around here are contract-based with tickets and have a time limit on open assignments and such, with a minimum quota to complete, and if something isn't completed within 24-72 hours, there are penalties. You reap what you sow and all that. I just try to get my **** done ASAP.

3. In IT, I've never had the opportunity to talk to anyone that mattered, though I've frequently had team leaders who think they are the center of the universe and I've never encountered anyone higher-up than them in the chain who actually deigns to talk to us lower-lifeforms/peons about what is going on/how things can be better. Again, this is a big problem with outsourcing/MSPs. Stuff rolls downhill and all that.

4. Most IT jobs suck because of bad working conditions, bad management, lack of focus, or a combination of factors. Many companies with bad practices/working environments go through an endless rotation of temp-2-hire workers because they know that they cannot keep anyone working there who could find a better job elsewhere and because it's cheaper than actually hiring someone. If you expect me to be happy being treated like ****, then you're an idiot. I don't care how high-up you are on the totem pole, you're not going to get retention of employees with abusive behavior and treating people poorly for slave wages.

5. I've seen many IT people do the bare minimum because that's what the culture of organization/company/team/whatever fosters. I've seen a lot of IT workers take 15-minute smoke breaks every 10 minutes, seen plenty who spend most of their day running personal errands while kicking their work over to others by reassigning tickets on the sly, seen team leaders work out of a sports bar so they can drink/play Golden Tee all day long while the rest of us work our butts off, and so on and so forth. I always gave 100% to my jobs, but at this point in my life, I won't bother staying with any employer where laziness and bad work ethics are the norm, so I pass on most offers if I get that vibe or don't like what I see when I visit the potential employer in person.