Autopsies aren’t just for dead bodies. Your company’s hiring record will improve dramatically once you institute fire-and-quit autopsies. Doing an autopsy means taking the time to figure out what went wrong with your hiring and employment process and how you could have prevented it.
Hiring good, long-term employees is one of the best things you can do for your company, and losing an employee can be one of the most expensive things that can happen. So it’s crucial to understand why some employees didn't work out.
Employees usually quit for one of two reasons. The first is that you made a bad hire. The second is that you made a good hire, but the person left anyway. Maybe the employee decided to change careers, move away from the area, or just didn’t fit in, and there was no way you could have predicted or prevented it.
There is little you can do about the second possibility, but what you learn about hiring the wrong person for a position is crucial. You can usually determine what went wrong by doing an autopsy and making sure you don’t repeat the error in the future.
