The Quickest Firing I've Ever Done (And What I Should Have Done Differently)
In the trades, we talk a lot about "hire slow, fire fast." I've lived by that principle — long applications, phone screens, in-person interviews, and working alongside our team for a couple of shifts before anyone flies solo. As a skilled labor company, I need to know someone is reliable before I trust them on their own. So when I let someone go recently after just a handful of days, it wasn't a surprise to me. What was a surprise was how much of that situation I had created myself.
Here's what happened: I'd gone through the full process with a candidate who looked great on paper — strong experience, excellent finish work, exactly the shower remodeler we were looking for. There was a lot of back and forth on his start date since he was wrapping up another project, and when he finally said he could start on a Friday, I jumped at it even though my schedule was a mess that day. Instead of doing a proper onboarding, I handed him off to my operations manager and told myself we'd sort out the details later. We didn't sit down together to go over expectations, I never walked him through Jobber, and — maybe worst of all — I never confirmed that his new hire paperwork was actually completed. I sent it. I just never followed up.
He worked a couple of shifts and the feedback was decent — promising, but still being evaluated. Then Tuesday came, and because we hadn't properly briefed him on the schedule or made sure he understood how our system works, he showed up to a unit turnover job with no context. He felt blindsided, and honestly, I get it — he came on as a bathroom remodeler. His reaction, though, was the problem: attitude with the crew, visibly disengaged at our team meeting, and a text to me saying he couldn't trust us. That was enough. I let him go, and I'm confident it was the right call — his attitude made it clear it wasn't going to work. But I also have to be honest: we didn't give him — or ourselves — a fair shot.
The lesson I'm taking away isn't just "fire fast." It's that hiring slow has to extend all the way through onboarding. I was so eager to get him into the pipeline that I skipped the very steps that exist for good reason. If I couldn't carve out the time to do a proper onboarding — paperwork signed, systems explained, expectations laid out clearly — I should have pushed the start date until I could. Going forward, I'm building out a simple onboarding checklist so that no matter how busy things get, nothing gets skipped just because I'm stretched thin. A great hire can become a problem hire real fast when you don't set them up to succeed.
