A thousand times before I had walked down this hallway, but this time I felt like Frodo on the road to Mount Doom. I had hired a new staff member (I'll call him Derik) less than six months before. He had impeccable credentials, stellar references, and a strong track record in ministry. I anticipated a long and fruitful ministry. We were going to soar to new heights together! Derik thought so, too. He was at least confident enough that he uprooted his family and relocated to join our church staff.
Yet here I was, 180 days later, walking to Derik's office to ask for his resignation. There had been no moral failure. No major policy violations. No angry conflicts. Just a long line of missed deadlines, dropped balls, misunderstandings, unmet expectations, and bad vibes. And I had had enough. Monday is usually my day off, but I spent this particular Monday fasting, praying, practicing my talk, and (mostly) trying to work up my courage. Finally at about 4:30 in the afternoon, I said, "It's now or never" and headed to his office.
Fifteen minutes later, he was gone.
I take full responsibility for this hiring train wreck. Derik is a great guy who loves God and loves the church, but he simply was not a good fit for our team. I thought I had done due diligence, but in retrospect I made the worst personnel decision of my life. And everybody paid for it.
Derik experienced a sense of failure like he never had before. I lost many nights of sleep and quite a bit of credibility in the eyes of those who trusted my decision-making skills. A ministry area that we desperately needed to develop actually went backward. And our entire church experienced a loss of momentum and morale from which we are just now beginning to recover.
Here are four key mistakes I made.
Overlooked signs
I had several phone interviews with Derik prior to hiring him, but only one face-to-face conversation, a two-hour lunch. That lunch went well and included lots of honest dialogue about our stories and our approach to ministry. But it simply wasn't enough face time.
I realized my mistake during Derik's first week.
Many of our staff and key volunteer leaders were attending a national training event together, and I viewed that as an opportunity for Derik to begin building relationships with some of our key leaders. I'd hoped that by the end of the week, Derik would be nicely assimilated. Derik, however, was aloof. He would sit by himself during sessions. He browsed the book table alone rather than mingling with other leaders. I was learning that Derik was an extreme introvert who struggled in large group settings. I'm an introvert myself, and so I certainly don't fault him for having that personality type. But Derik's introversion was so extreme that he found it difficult to function in the team atmosphere that we worked hard to develop.
I would have discovered this earlier if I had spent more time with Derik in different types of settings prior to the hiring decision. He was comfortable and confident when it was just the two of us at a restaurant, but my limited time with him gave me a skewed perspective on his personality. I talked with his references and previous employers, and that's obviously a valuable part of the hiring process. But their perspective was based on their particular setting and couldn't replace my first-hand observations of the candidate in our setting.
If I had to do it again, I would have dramatically slowed down the hiring process so that I could spend several significant chunks of time with Derik (and the other finalists). This would have given me a much more complete view of each of them. In addition to the primary interview with me, I would now add the following types of experiences to a hiring protocol:
1. A social event (dinner, a movie, etc.) with my wife and a few of our friends. 2. One-on-one time with each member of the pastoral staff. 3. A group interview with the entire staff together. 4. A social event with the staff. 5. Attendance with me at some kind of all-church event or gathering.
Including all of these components in a candidate's visit obviously involves more time, more energy, more planning, and more money. But since decisions are only as good as the information they're based on, I believe the information gained from these experiences is more than worth it.
I recently talked with a senior pastor who was heading to his hometown for a weekend visit with his mother—and he invited a potential staff member to come along! They had lots of drive-time together, ate dinner together at his mom's house, spent a relaxed afternoon hitting some tourist sites, and wrapped up the weekend by attending a major league baseball game together. (You can learn a lot about someone by what they say to umpires!)
Prior to my experience with Derik, I would have laughed off that kind of time investment, but no more.
Settling
My best friend in the church is a business executive who has made dozens of critical hiring decisions. He's built many highly successful teams, and his mantra when it comes to hiring is this: "Never settle." When I'm going through a hiring decision, he always asks, "Jack, are you settling?" And the next time he sees me, he asks again, "Jack, are you settling?"
You'd think I'd get the idea by now, but apparently I'm slower than most. When I assess the mistakes I made in hiring Derik, it's clear: I settled.
To settle means to hire someone even when you have some internal reservations about that person, a nagging sense that this isn't a good fit. Maybe there's a personality quirk that bothers you, or a sarcastic comment he made in the interview. Maybe his talent level is a "7" where you really need a "9." It could be a thousand different things, but something has you wondering if this person is right for the position.
I had a couple of reservations with Derik. In our initial e-mail exchange, he often didn't reply in what I would consider a timely fashion. I had to wait a couple days for answers, and even had to send out reminder e-mails: "Derik, did you get my last email? Waiting for your answer." In our face-to-face interview, Derik used a word that I consider in poor taste. He asked about compensation earlier in the interview than I thought was appropriate. None of these (and there were others) were deal-wreckers, but they were enough to get me thinking: "Hmmm … I wonder if we've got the right guy." My gut was telling me to be careful.
I ignored the warning lights, making excuses to myself:
I'm a good coach, and I can help Derik develop in these areas.
A job search is a stressful time, and I've got to expect he'll make some mistakes.
He's doing a good job in his current setting, so he'll do a good job for us.
He's the best we've got, and we can't afford to wait.
Of course, no candidate is perfect. And people can be coached and developed. And we do need to have sober judgment about the caliber of people we can attract to our staffs; my guess is that Bill Hybels wasn't interested in our opening. At least I didn't get a resume from him.
Nevertheless, I now agree with my friend: "Never settle."
Payday, no way
When we were in the process of determining the compensation package for this new position, I had lunch with a friend who is senior pastor at a similar-sized church. I asked him about the annual salary for a comparable position at his church, and he pulled a pen from his pocket and grabbed a napkin from the table. I thought for a minute he was going to explain the plan of salvation (isn't that what we all do at restaurants with pens and napkins?), but he said, "This is what that position will cost you." He wrote a number on the napkin.
"You've got to be kidding me!" I said, and immediately decided that we would never offer a salary anywhere near that high. I intended to fill the position and save a bunch of money, too.
Our finance committee ultimately decided on a compensation package that we felt was reasonable and within our reach, and yes, it was about $20,000 less than the number my friend had written on that napkin. I should have listened to my friend.
My first sign of trouble was when some highly qualified candidates backed out of consideration upon learning the salary range. Prima donnas, I thought. We'll find someone with a heart to serve. Eventually we did, but being cheap with compensation cost us a lot more than we saved.
Our hard costs included Derik's severance package and additional moving and search expenses. Our soft costs were much higher: the loss of ministry momentum, stress and strain in my own life, staff disruption. I can't begin to put a price tag on all of that, but the number would clearly be north of $20,000.
Sometimes you really do get what you pay for.
Signs to ignore
We've all chuckled at people who make decisions based on something they interpret as a "sign" from God, such as the person who plans an overseas vacation because when they wake up the digital clock says 7:47. I certainly affirm that God can speak to people through unusual means, but much of what happens under the heading of "seeking the will of God for decisions" appeared to me to be not much more than hocus-pocus.
Until I did it.
Derik was already considering a move to our region of the country, and so my thinking went along these lines: "Lord, if he's potentially moving here anyway, and the reasons for the move are so noble . . . that can't be coincidence, can it?" My over-spiritualization of some human circumstances clouded my thinking and tipped me toward a hiring decision that I might not have made otherwise.
I want to be open to whatever way the Lord chooses to lead me. But I don't want to be foolish either. So if future candidates for staff positions have the same birthday I do, love the same baseball team I do, have the same life verse I do, and the first initials of all their kids' names spell "H-I-R-E M-E," I'll wonder what I should make of it, but I'm not going to allow such "signs" to determine the hiring decision.
The walk of shame
When I walked out of Derik's office that day, I saw my father in the hallway. All the emotion and stress of the decision caught up with me, and tears began streaming down my face. I couldn't tell Dad all the particulars, but it was obvious that I had just gone through something that had torn my heart in two. Mostly, I felt sad for Derik, for the way that my poor decision-making had brought such pain to his life. But I also felt sad for me and for our staff and for our church.
Hiring decisions are tough. Bad hiring decisions are brutal. I hope the lessons I learned this time will help me do better next time around.
Jack Connell is senior pastor of Crosswinds Wesleyan Church in Canandaigua, New York.
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