PayPal India's Anupam Pahuja knows the trick to turn around a bad hire

PayPal India MD said impatience towards new hires sends a wrong message to the employees.

By Rashmi Menon, ET Bureau | Updated: Aug 02, 2018, 03.44 PM IST

Anupam Pahuja, MD, PayPal India, believes a bad hire can be turned around — with a little time and patience.

Hiring is an art unto itself. Most founders will vouch for the difficulty in picking “culturally fit” people. While it’s an important attribute to watch out for, PayPal India head Anupam Pahuja believes that leaders can often be impatient in their expectations towards new hires.

“In this hire-and-fire world, it’s easy to fire people,” said Pahuja during his recent visit to Mumbai.

“The days of longevity and tenure, at least in MNCs, are gone. Nobody cares. It’s very transactional in nature. However, I feel the opposite. What’s important is not a bad hire but what to do about it.”

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Illustrating his point, Singapore-based Pahuja said that when you bring five people together, it is inevitable that one or two may not fit in with everyone else.

“Your tendency could easily be ‘Arre yaar, kya dimaag kharab karenge [Why rack your brains?]. Get rid of this guy’. It’s very easy to do that. What is difficult is to develop that person and see how he can attain the stature you saw in them,” Pahuja said.

According to Pahuja, diversity of opinion, thought, feeling, or anything, is not necessarily encouraged by many people. This, he says, is the worst thing you (as a leader) could do to a company because it sends a wrong message to the employees.

So, what’s his strategy? Pahuja believes that he would have seen some qualities that match the overall culture of the organisation, which would have led to hiring that person.

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“Typically, after meeting a bunch of people you know who is real. Therefore, one shouldn’t be shortsighted and should really work on your people to make them grow. And for them to be chosen in this company is not an easy process,” he said.

However, there is a chance that the person may be the wrong fit. In that case, Pahuja said, you may have to let the person go.

“But that needs to happen after a period of intervention. You highlight what the person could improve on and then you measure it on a close basis. Even then if the person doesn’t improve, maybe he/she is better fit for a different role, somewhere else,” he said.

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By Masoom Gupte

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Median remuneration basically means that half the employees in the organisation make less than the amount, while the remainder half makes more.

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In Pic: On the left is YC Deveshwar, and on the right is Vivek Gambhir.