You will be able to tell a slow start from a bad fit and decide what to do about each.
It is week seven. Your new hire was due to run their first discovery meeting by week five, and their calendar is still empty apart from internal training, though in team meetings they seem cheerful enough. When you ask how it is going, they say fine, just building up the pipeline. You start to wonder whether you hired the wrong person.
Maybe you did. But most slow starts are not bad hires, and the ones that are become much harder to deal with if you wait. This lesson is about telling the two apart and acting on what you find.
The first mistake is comparing the new hire with whoever is top of the leaderboard. Aisha is Wei Ming's best rep, and she reached her own first discovery meeting in week three. Next to her, almost anyone looks slow.
The right comparison is the ramp milestones you set in lesson 3.1. They were based on the slowest of the team's successful hires, so a new rep who is behind them is behind everyone who went on to succeed, and that deserves attention. Being behind Aisha alone tells you very little.
In Hui Min's case, the milestones were clear: first solo call by week three, first discovery meeting by week five. She made her first solo call in week three, on time, but by week six she still had no discovery meeting booked. One milestone was missed by a week, which is worth a conversation now and is not yet a cause for alarm.
Before you plan anything, find out why the milestone slipped. There are four common causes, and each needs a different response.
A skill gap means they do not yet know how to do the task well. They make calls, but buyers do not agree to meet. The fix is coaching and practice.
A will gap means they know how but are not doing enough of it, perhaps because the task feels uncomfortable or because they are spending time on things they prefer. The fix starts with a frank conversation about what you expect and why.
A knowledge gap means they are missing information: who to call, what the process is, what the product does for a particular buyer. The fix is usually quick, and it may point to a gap in your onboarding.
The fourth cause sits outside work: a sick parent, a move, money worries, a health issue. You do not need the details, and you should not press for them. But if something outside work is affecting their performance, the plan needs to account for it, and HR may be able to help.
Ask open questions and listen. "Talk me through last week's calls. What happened when you asked for a meeting?" will get you further than "Why haven't you booked anything?" When Wei Ming listened to two of Hui Min's calls, he found she was explaining the product well and then ending with "Let me know if you would like to find out more." She was never asking for a meeting. That was a skill gap, and a common one for someone who came from a role where clients usually called her.
Once you know the cause, agree a plan with the new hire. Keep it short: one or two specific changes, a way to check them, and a date to review. Longer plans with six actions get half-done.
Wei Ming's plan for Hui Min ran for two weeks. She would end every warm call with a specific meeting request and two suggested times. She would make the calls with Aisha listening to the first five and giving her one piece of feedback after each. They would meet on the Friday of each week to look at how many requests she had made and how many had turned into meetings. The review date was the end of week eight.
Write the plan down and both keep a copy, as you did with expectations in lesson 1.3. Be clear that this is support, aimed at getting them to the milestone.
By the end of week eight, Hui Min had booked three discovery meetings. The gap was closed and the plan ended.
Sometimes it does not go that way. The plan ends, the milestone is still missed, a second plan is agreed, and that one slips too. When milestones keep slipping after real support, more time on its own rarely changes the result.
The fair thing at this point is to act early. Talk to your own manager and to HR about the options, which might include a different role that suits the person better, a formal performance process, or ending the employment. Follow your company's process and Singapore's employment rules, which HR will know. What you should not do is keep hoping. A hire who is not suited to the role usually knows it before you do, and months of missed targets do them no favours either.
Keep a record throughout: the milestones, the plans you agreed, what support you gave and what happened. That record protects the new hire as much as it protects you, because it shows that decisions were based on agreed goals and real support.
The activity below gives you a fictional new hire who has missed their first discovery meeting milestone. Before you write the support plan, decide which of the four gaps you think is most likely and what question you would ask to check.
Write a two-week support plan for a fictional new hire who has missed their first discovery meeting milestone.
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