Autopsies aren’t just for dead
bodies. Your company’s hiring record
will improve dramatically once you institute fire-and-quit autopsies. Doing an autopsy means taking the time to
figure out what went wrong with your hiring and employment process and how you
could have prevented it.
Hiring good, long-term employees
is one of the best things you can do for your company, and losing an employee
can be one of the most expensive things that can happen. So it’s crucial to understand why some
employees didn't work out.
Employees usually quit for one of
two reasons. The first is that you made
a bad hire. The second is that you made
a good hire, but the person left anyway.
Maybe the employee decided to change careers, move away from the area,
or just didn’t fit in, and there was no way you could have predicted or
prevented it.
There is little you can do about
the second possibility, but what you learn about hiring the wrong person for a
position is crucial. You can usually
determine what went wrong by doing an autopsy and making sure you don’t repeat
the error in the future.