Who Should Really Do the Hiring & Firing?

The acquisition and termination of talent is one of grave importance to the viability of any business. Hiring the right person and firing a wrong fit requires a heightened level of learnedness and cannot be taken lightly.

For such crucial tasks the question then becomes, who should be responsible for the discovery and dismissal of employees?

Instinctively, most people would assume that this delicate task should fall squarely on the shoulders of the Talent Acquisition Manager - also commonly referred to as the Human Resources (HR) Manager.

Some justifiable reasons for this misconception can be attributed to continued rhetoric, (of such HR personnel being solely in charge of all employee matters), written in company handbooks, seen in various position descriptions, and even for the mere fact that the job titles include adjectives like “Human” or nouns like “Talent”.

But does that make this general assumption ok?

Well, we disagree with that line of thinking!

The role of hiring and firing shouldn’t be individual responsibility of the Talent Acquisition Manager, no; it should be a joint effort between the Human Resources and Hiring Manager (The Head of a Department or Business Unit for instance). Here are some explanations to support this claim:

In hiring scenarios it takes a village to find the right talent

• The onset of talent recruitment typically starts with the Hiring Manager recognising that a particular skill set is missing or needed in order to meet his/her overall departmental goals, and then, places a request to the HR Manager who then in turn embarks on an exploration mission in the external talent pool.
• The details of hard and soft skills that provide clarity and act as a filtering process for the HR Manager during the examination of potential candidates, also comes from the Hiring Manager – without this crucial information, the HR Manager doesn’t know what to look out for and will stumble in the dark.
• As is customary, most HR Managers conduct the initial screening of a potential candidate. They ask standard questions to get general sense of the applicant, and to ensure that they tick off a decent proportion of the job necessities. If said interviewee does well at the first round, their candidacy is passed on to the Hiring Manager.
• The ultimate decision as to the potential feasibility and fit of a candidate comes from the recommendation of the Manager in need. As previously mentioned, they have the broader context of the specific needs of the department to get things done – the HR Manager cannot make that final call.

In firing scenarios it requires a unified front

• When it comes to the consideration of an employee termination, both the Hiring Manager and Human Resource Manager work together to either formulate a plan of action to retain the employee, or jointly arrive at the conclusion that the expulsion of a worker is indeed the right course of action.
• When it comes to the actual face-to-face termination, anyone who has been such a dire situation can attest to the fact that things can spiral out of control and quickly become awkward.

This scene from the movie “Up In Air” bears testament.

In order to avoid such precarious situations, HR Managers, again, in conjunction with the Manger in charge, put together a comprehensive report to ensure that the discharge isn’t only handled cautiously, but to also guarantee that the company is protected from any potential legal lawsuits.

 As you can see the process of hiring and firing doesn’t occur within the walls of Human Resources. In fact, it is a strategic partnership and collaboration that crosses the organisational divide.

So, the next time you get the urge to say (or even think) that such undertaking falls on one person, remember that it is a communal effort.