Is it better to staff a position with anyone just for the sake of filling it?

First, have you figured out what your business unit really needs to get done, and what is politically- or budget-motivated fluff?

Think of the organization or team as having certain specific needs. Only staff with people who have the desire to meet one or more of those needs, and want to do it within the type of team culture you want to promote. It's amazing how much you can get done when you forget about 'positions' and think of what the team really needs first.

If you are short staffed, a bad employee uses up time and energy, the goodwill of the other staff members who have to deal with the repercussions, and management credibility. A bad hire makes life harder for everyone. When you are running lean and mean, the good workers need to know that you are managing the process to make things as good as possible. They want to be part of a winning team rather than a team that condones mediocrity. The weakest 20% of your staff can use up 80% of your resources. How can we justify that type of hiring decision at a time when there are so many really good people looking for work? This could be a time to shift focus and determine how to attract those really great people.

Some applicants just should not be hired because they'll lower morale and productivity and will require so much management time that keeping the position open costs less than filling it with a bad hire. Bad hires (not bad people) are those employees who should not have been hired. We identify bad hires as those applicants with job suitability below 70% while good hires are above 85%.

Ours is a small company, so we each interact with each other every single day. A bad hire drags the team down and ends up taking more of people's time than they help.

How do I know when we have a bad hire? When my team asks me how to account for their time spent doing re-work or re-teaching a co-worker on their timesheets.

I would agree with Phil and generally say "No, staffing with just anyone is a very bad idea".

However, I have run into one case where I thought it was a good idea. If you are in a situation with a brutal 24x7 oncall schedule, then having bodies to throw at the oncall rotation is a Good Thing. If you don't have enough bodies, your "5 good people instead of 10" will start to burn out and quit and you'll end up having to replace a lot more of the team than you wanted to, and you'll have to replace the people on the team who you never wanted to replace.

If you are short staffed, a bad employee uses up time and energy, the goodwill of the other staff members who have to deal with the repercussions, and management credibility. A bad hire makes life harder for everyone. When you are running lean and mean, the good workers need to know that you are managing the process to make things as good as possible. They want to be part of a winning team rather than a team that condones mediocrity. The weakest 20% of your staff can use up 80% of your resources. How can we justify that type of hiring decision at a time when there are so many really good people looking for work? This could be a time to shift focus and determine how to attract those really great people.

Love the answer, Guy. Reminds me of Daniel Pink's Drive.

No. Definitely Not for your company nor for the team the person will join, and event less for yourself so you get rid of the though job of finding someone.
Actually why would you do that?
Simple basic common sense: if the function is critical, then you don't want to take the risk and its cost of having the wrong person onboard and restart your hiring/selection process all over (you will lose credibility towards the other canidates you discaded in the process too, btw)
If the funciton is not critical: do you really need to staff it so urgently as to take whomever for it as long as it gets done?

Exception to the rule: jobs which unfortunately still exist and are not intellectually demanding (and enriching neither to the worker) -- but there again points 1 & 2 above remain valid.

The answer must be "no" I would have thought. Not only does a "just anyone" put a strain on fellow workers but it also raises the question of the hirer's competence in the eyes of the rest of the workforce.

I do understand (and have seen people succumb to) the temptation to fill a post with "anyone" but it will almost always end in tears.

NEVER!

The best way for me to answer this question is in the words of one of my clients, CEO of a $700 million financial institution "We will not hire people just to put cheeks in a seat."

We all know it happens that companies hire people because of the pressure of the moment. But, we also know that in the long run it will come back to hurt the organization in some way i.e. lack of teamwork, impact on the culture, inability to deliver the product to the customer.

The key is to have a process. Spend the time upfront outlining the duties/responsibilities , competencies , required qualifications, and needed prior experiences of the job. With this step done you can then evaluate candidates againist the required need and hopefully select the right person.

Takes a lot more time but worth the investment.

Filling a vacant position with a "warm body" is the worst way to hire. I have seen cases, however, where an inexperienced supervisor, nervous about having a vacant workstation, rushes, or puts pressure on a recruiter, to get somebody -- anybody -- into the chair. The supervisor feels better in the sbort term, but loses long term.

Phil,
Your response would depend on an evaluation of the ultimate costs. On one hand, you have this open position which means the work has to be shared by the other employees until you fill it which could lead to loss of productivity. On the other hand, if you fill it and then you have to let the person go because they were not a fit, you have added costs of the interim salary, the new search fees, the new training costs, the added benefit packages etc. You really need to weigh out what it is that you want to achieve. In this current global workplace it would be more in your interest to find the right person at the right time in the right place to fill the position instead of hiring just to fill the spot with a warm body.

The question is predicated on the fact that the organization has no pipeline of talent. As the saying goes, "Never dig a well when you're thirsty." Smart employers will be constantly scouting for talent and connect with them to engage them so that when an opportunity opens up a good replacement is available right away. So you need to develop the infrastructure to be constantly mining talent-- monitoring online forums such as this one, noting people who make good presentations at conferences, keeping in touch with candidates who didn't get hired but who still show promise, etc. As for the exceptions noted above (call center, lower level employees), if the position has any customer contact whatsoever under NO circumstances should you compromise your standards. Those positions-- no matter how lowly paid-- are your "face" to the customer and will enhance or destroy your brand in a matter of seconds.

The answers above presume that "just anyone" invariably will be "bad." I don't think that's a fair assumption, do you? Some will be less ideal, to be sure; but that doesn't make them the worst candidate possible, and it would be wrong for you to draw that conclusion.

Instead, you should use a bit of fuzzy logic. You probably already know what the ideal candidate looks like. Now think about what the bare minimum would be. There's room for some flexibility here, too. Can you temporarily delegate the riskiest parts of the job to someone else while keeping the rest of the job intact for the person who's available.

Few things in this world need to be all or nothing. This is a perfect example.

Megan, bad hires are easy to identify prior to the job offer.

Phil is right on. Would you marry someone just to have company until the "right" one came along?
Hiring the right person and integrating them into the organization is where the whole process of employee engagement starts. Determining what you really need in the job and then selecting someone with those skills sets and congruent values is critical.
We spend trillions on turnover in the U.S annually,most of it becauuse of sloppy or "lazy" hiring.
One of the reasons is that I am not a fan of "probation" or "trial" periods is that they often create this same case of false security. We don't really monitor performance until the very last moment and usually end up "converting them" often erroneously. Hire hard- manage easy!

Using marriage as an example is an improper comparison. Whether it turns out that way or not, when people get married, they assume at least for the moment that they're making a lifetime commitment. Work contracts today are no more than two or three years, making the relationship more like going steady.

Don't let the job crunch right now fool you. There's a skill shortage, and by the time it becomes apparent, it will be too late. You'll find that you're going to have to make do with the people you've got.

The marriage example was facetious. Assuming you are in a short term relationship is a bad practice. Too many times we hire people "short term" or temporarily assuming we will "fix" it later.
As a change agent and HR executive I can't tell you how many long term employees who have been marginal for years I had to terminate because no one dealt with the problem.
I agree assume everyone you hire will be there long term and hire accordingly- think relationship not transaction.
There is a reason why top performing organizations have extensive hiring and selection processes- they don't count on a "mulligan".

Mark, "There is a reason why top performing organizations have extensive hiring and selection processes - they don't count on a "mulligan" is funny yet true. Too many employers also depend on "do overs", hiring and firing until they hire a good employee by happenstance. Employers that hire for talent are seldom surprised by their new hires' job performance and tenure.