Hiring Replacements

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December 30, 2025

by a searcher from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill - Kenan-Flagler Business School in Austin, TX, USA

Operators: How do you tackle hiring replacements for a bad actor in a critical role? Naturally, you don't want a critical seat empty for an extended period of time, so you might not want to wait until you fire them to hire someone new, especially when the recruiting time could be months. Or frame it better, you don't want to fire them until you have someone else lined up due to the long lead time to fill the seat. Great employees are typically not dying to start a new job tomorrow. Unsurprisingly, people that know they are not a good fit for the company (several warnings, improvement plans, etc.) are often job hunting as well and have alerts for roles that match their skills in said city, so they will see the job posting.
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Reply by a searcher
in Raleigh, NC, USA
In my experience, fire quickly when you know the fit isn't there. When we bought our plumbing company, at the meeting where the seller introduced us, one of the guys just didn't fit. Everyone was happy and joking around. The mood was generally light. He was slumped in his chair and snuck out the back door. He was also the lead salesman, having closed 1.4M in sales the previous year. We tried to work with him for a couple months but he was toxic and everyone avoided him.... but for some reason that guy could sell. We concentrated on getting someone trained to replace him and wanted to try and bring him around until he pushed too far, lashed out on one of our best techs. We fired him that day and the next day, literally everyone was thanking us. We hurt for a little bit due to lost sales but we got back on track and the culture improved immediately. Meetings felt better and we set the precedent of what will and will not be tolerated.
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Reply by a searcher
from Elon University in Charlotte, NC, USA
Depends what level the role is. If it is VP level an above, recruiters don’t (shouldn’t) post on a job board. If it’s for a technician, I’m not too sure. And for timeline, I highly recommend hire a recruiter because it’s of course going to take you a lot longer than it would for someone who does it every day. We’ve had a client hire someone as fast as 10 days. Since you are on the clock, structure the agreement with the recruiter so the faster they work, the better incentives they have. But once you are in the interview phase, take your time. If you want to talk it through feel free to DM me or email me at redacted
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