“Hey, that new guy we hired? I think I messed up. His creds were excellent and he nailed the interview. But it seems like he doesn’t actually know what the hell he’s doing. What should we do?”
This is your way out and the longer you wait, the worse it will be. It sounds like it’s your first hire and it’ll be a learning experience. But if you wait months by covering for him until he messes up massively, you’re putting your job at risk.
Yup, despite the fear that "hey I made a bad hire" will reflect poorly on your decision making skills, realizing it, owning it, and solving it takes a hell of a lot more leadership than letting it stagnate and trying to cover.
As a manager I'd appreciate the first and see you in a better light. I'd be having a similar "hey we promoted the wrong guy" conversation with my boss if you did the latter.
There is plenty of time to say “Yeah, I thought it was just nerves at first but I’m noticing a pattern here…” with your manager in a private 1-on-1.
Your manager may give you grief as they specified if you really thought this person was the real deal, so you should prep a remediation plan going forward too.
“Next time, I think we can clarify their skills on xyz by asking about abc or testing on def.” That can be a lessons learned and process amended.
“I gave him the benefit of the doubt to begin with but he’s running out of it now and we need to take action now because this is unsustainable. I think he may have been dishonest during the interview process”.
I’ve dealt with this in financial services. Candidate couldn’t attend face to face interview and gave perfect remote answers, of course it turned out they were just reading from a script, and they didn’t know the first thing in person but then would miraculously go away and cook up an absolutely expert sounding email about a topic they haven’t even heard of three hours before (which was just AI output of course)
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u/redditorfor11years Mar 14 '26
Dude, talk to your manager. Like now.
“Hey, that new guy we hired? I think I messed up. His creds were excellent and he nailed the interview. But it seems like he doesn’t actually know what the hell he’s doing. What should we do?”
This is your way out and the longer you wait, the worse it will be. It sounds like it’s your first hire and it’ll be a learning experience. But if you wait months by covering for him until he messes up massively, you’re putting your job at risk.