When Hiring Goes Wrong: How Design Executives Can Recover

Note: Welcome back to my post series for the Executive Designer, focusing on building a successful design org from the ground up. In my last post, I discussed red and green flags to look for as you’re building your team, as well as what to do when you and the rest of the hiring committee don’t see eye-to-eye. If you manage these challenges well, you can avoid many bad hires, but what happens when one slips through the cracks?

This isn’t something any design leader wants to hear (and believe me, I don’t like saying it, either), but let’s face it: hiring mistakes happen. No matter how solid your process is, bad hires can never be completely avoided. Sure, you can minimize the chances of making a mistake by thoroughly screening for values and experience, but at some point, you’ll bring on a candidate who just isn’t the right fit. 

So, what’s an up-and-coming design executive to do?

Knowing when to cut your losses

I remember a time when I hired someone who I really thought was the right fit for the role. Their experience and skills matched what we needed, and they seemed aligned with our values. The hiring panel was generally, if not unanimously, in favor of extending an offer. The team was excited about bringing them on. And the candidate accepted …

Fast forward a few months, the new employee was having a hard time adjusting to the team. While they interviewed really well for seniority, maturity, and dealing with ambiguity, it was not matching up in real life. Feedback – sometimes strongly worded – was coming from product managers, engineers, and marketers (all key partners to this individual) and other business stakeholders that they were not feeling included in the design process, and they struggled to get their feedback incorporated early enough without affecting the timelines of their projects. This designer struggled showing up as a senior member who would be able to set an example for others. Their approach was fixed with very little room to adapt to the needs of the context they were in, which resulted in disagreements and misalignments.

In response to this feedback, I worked with this individual extensively to improve their performance. I believed that they were capable of more than they were delivering, and I wanted to give them every opportunity to be successful, and they expressed receptiveness to this coaching and help. But despite offering them additional support and setting very specific and measurable goals for how to improve, the situation was not changing.

I had to make the call that this was not the right fit for the team and the company.

It’s easy to fall victim to the sunk-cost fallacy in these situations. “I’ve already put so much time into this person! There has to be a way to make this work!” 

It’s true that hiring and onboarding is expensive, and takes a lot of time and effort from many people. But you have to be honest with yourself and your team, especially when your design team is new and growing. This is the right time to course-correct for the culture you want to build. Also, you’ve done a lot to form relationships and get buy-in for design at your company, so you don’t want to risk letting problems drag out. If you’ve done everything you can think of and the situation still isn’t improving, that’s usually a sign that it’s time to part ways. Trying to keep pushing forward will just dig a deeper hole.

Damage control

When you realize you’ve made a hiring mistake, you need to act quickly but don’t panic. The last thing you want to do is get sloppy, bring in the first replacement you can find, and then end up with another bad fit. 

Instead, you need to take a step back to reflect on the situation. Debrief with your reports and the others involved in the hire to figure out next steps. What is the fallout of this going to be for your team? What will your transition plan look like? 

Even more important is reflecting on what went wrong. More importantly, how can it be prevented the second time around? Was it a performance issue? A lack of clear expectations? Misalignment? Something else? You have to be honest with yourself here, or you’ll risk repeating the same mistake. Again, talk to the cross-functional team, business leaders, and stakeholders, besides the design team — and seek feedback. If they were close to the problem, they may have noticed things you didn’t. 

Bonus: When you’re the hire that doesn’t work out

Here’s something you might not have thought about: What if you’re the wrong hire? What if someone hires you to build a design org from scratch and it doesn’t work out? 

This can be a tough situation, but it’s also an important learning opportunity. Just like when you’re the one who made the bad hire, you need to take a moment to reflect on what went wrong. Put your researcher hat on and do a root cause analysis. 

• What was in your control? 

• Could you have allocated money differently? 

• Could you have failed faster? 

• Could you have approached things more iteratively? 

• Could you have formed stronger relationships and built more trust within the organization? 

Remember, you shouldn’t be blaming yourself. Instead, focus on gathering data that will help you improve in the future. Some leadership roles just don’t work out, but if you’re thoughtful, you can make sure the next one is the right fit. 

Learning from your mistakes

The big takeaway from all this is that even though hiring mistakes happen, what really matters is what you do next and what you learn from them. The best way to handle bad hires is by recognizing when you’ve made one and course-correcting without getting emotional. You also need to be willing to honestly reflect on what went wrong and what you can do to avoid the same problem later on. I believe you can turn even the biggest hiring mistake into a learning opportunity—but to do that, you have to be willing to learn. 

Look out for my next post to learn more time-tested tips for building a winning design team!