The Many Challenges Of Hiring A Friend

Nov 11th, 2005 | By Bill | Category: Employment News



The Many Challenges Of Hiring A Friend

Heidi Flammang knows the best and the worst about hiring friends.

The worst happened a few years ago, when a close friend whom Flammang had hired to help with her fledgling business and whom she trusted “inherently with my life and livelihood” turned out to be a thief.

Eventually she fired that friend, but meanwhile another friend – someone she’d known since the age of 12 – began working for her. “I was very hesitant and very tentative,” said Flammang, who runs Camp Bow Wow, a dog day care and boarding franchise based in Parker, Colo. “I took baby steps and brought her on to help temporarily.”

In that case, the work relationship has blossomed while the friendship has remained strong. Even so, there are special challenges to hiring a friend – for instance, doing your friend’s job review.

“It was one of the toughest reviews I ever had to do,” said Flammang. “Every review has suggestions for improving, but it’s hard to tell your friend how to improve.”

Lately, the subject of hiring friends – or, pejoratively, cronies – has been hovering over Washington.

Two of President Bush’s cronies (Michael Brown and Harriet Miers) have seen their stars crash, or at least fade. Brown was forced to step down as head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency after his poor performance during Hurricane Katrina, and after much criticism about her lack of judicial experience, Miers withdrew her nomination to the Supreme Court.

In both cases, Bush was accused of considering friendship and loyalty as more essential than qualifications for the job.

No one can argue that hiring a person only because he or she is a friend is a bad idea, but the fact is that hiring friends – qualified or not – is very often what happens, whether in business or politics. The same is often true in the volunteer world, where friends want friends to work with them on a church committee or a parent-teachers group.

Whether it works well depends on many factors, but one thing for sure: Even if it’s successful, it’s more complicated to work with friends.

Leslie Yerkes, president of Catalyst Consulting Group in Cleveland, said, “We all get our jobs because we know someone. That’s an honest fact. We get a good job because of networking. Someone knows someone who makes an interjection on behalf of someone.”

However, when you hire a friend, your relationship becomes multilayered because it includes at least two vastly different roles: one inside the workplace and the other outside.

“You have to learn and become conscious of which role is talking to which role at any one time,” said Yerkes. “It is ripe for conflict, misunderstanding and possibly breaches of integrity – not because of any intention but because the relationships are so deep in the different roles and confusion sets in.”

Arnie Holzman, managing partner for Behavioral Health Consultants in Hamden, said you have to understand the boundaries within the relationship: which behaviors are acceptable in which setting.

“I think George Bush violates those boundaries or confuses them at a minimum,” said Holzman, “by assuming because somebody is a friend, they are also an expert. He confuses loyalty with competence.”

Not that hiring a friend doesn’t come with certain benefits. “The pluses are you don’t have to create a new relationship,” said Holzman. “You do know who that person is: whether they are trustworthy and competent. What you don’t know is how well you’ll work together.”

But even sometimes your personal assessment of a friend turns out to be wrong as was the case with Flammang. When it came time to oust her friend for embezzling, she discovered that the friend “thought she deserved those checks, deserved bonuses for doing such a good job.”

The process of firing her also became complicated because her friend felt that Flammang was betraying her.

Flammang said that in other situations where she hired a friend – her childhood friend, Cricket Christgau – the pair have worked hard to establish clear boundaries between their friendship and the business.

“We have to work very hard to keep things separate: `Hey this is a friend call’ or `Hey this is a business call,’” Flammang said.

Christgau said separation of the roles can be difficult. “You start working and it’s like, oh my gosh, I forget to ask you about your boyfriend or tell you what’s going on in my kid’s life, but we’ve always established boundaries,” said Christgau. “We’ll say, `OK this is me you’re talking to; let’s not do this by e-mail.”

If you are hiring a friend or are a friend who is about to be hired, here are some pointers experts advise you to consider:

First, consider whether it’s worth losing the friendship. “You have to have the understanding that you are putting your friendship at risk,” said Holzman. “The business relationship cannot be altered that much. A friendship is much more flexible and is going to lose.”

Know also, if you are a potential employee, that your friendship may also be the reason you don’t get the job, said Yerkes. “Though you may be the best candidate, your deep connection may play against you,” Yerkes said.

Next, make sure that capability is driving the process, says Monica Marchese, owner of Marchese Consulting in Hartford. “Obviously, knowing a person – that’s how I get my candidates through my networks, but I’m a believer that capability should overshadow” friendship.

If the person is capable, then talk about expectations. David Gage, a psychologist and the author of “The Partnership Charter: How To Start Out Right With Your New Business Relationship (Or Fix the One You’re In),” said, “You have a set of expectations from your relationship with your friend. Those expectations have to shift somewhat because it’s a different world out there in business. … Friends may be very open with one another in their personal relationship, but when they get into business, they may discover that the boss friend is much more reserved.”

Gage also advises that you discuss ahead of time what will happen if the employment or partnership situation doesn’t work out. Plan an exit strategy.

Lastly, Liz Ryan, founder and chief executive officer of WorldWIT, an online community for professional women in Boulder, Colo., says to value the friendship over the work relationship. “It’s easier to find new employees than to find new friends.”

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