Hiring your own boss? If it looks too good to be true..it is.
As it happens, in a normal workplace scenario many times, regardless of level, seniority, etc we have dreamt of being able to replace our boss with somebody of our choosing.
It is the perfect dream, and in most cases you want to have that confined to your 5 minutes of daily distraction or sleep at night rather than reality.
Let’s look at things how they happen in real life: if you have to hire your own boss, this means you are taking orders from somebody higher above, who may well be quite disconnected with your day to day activity and mission. There is one, notable and exciting exception: the startup. In these cases the first employee (or the first senior HR officer) sometimes helps or guides the recruitment process for the most senior managers. That is acceptable, given that the whole operation is new from scratch. Of course, it is not a given, as starting up a branch overseas (for example) usually happens by sending over somebody to do the starting up and hiring and recovering the manager later on.
Leave aside the above and you are in your perfect nightmare scenario: you have a senior person two (or three) levels above you that is asking YOU to make a decision that is not yours to make. Whatever your performance in this situation is, you better look for another job. The company you are working for has had a nervous breakdown. It means that the chain of responsibility has literally gone down the drain and that senior management has lost the ability to make decisions and carry the responsibility. Leave as soon as possible, trust me, companies are not democracies because they are meant to make money and be competitive. And that flies in the face of decisions taken always at lower levels.
So your senior management is in tatters, unable even to hire a headhunter. That is even worse: it means they are not accountable and are so useless that they don’t even have any cash to invest on a decent (and possibly detached) choice. Somebody higher has no trust.
When it actually comes to being a significant part of the recruitment process of your boss, any suggestion you will make will change your future. Nothing new about that except that your ability to evaluate your boss is highly influenced by your current situation and your previous experience. And selecting your best friend or “best boss from the past” may well lead to a disaster, there is a very good chance that markets, ages and priorities will be different. And you will be in trouble.
In short, if the new boss is a brilliant hire it will be his merit in doing things and your incompetent senior management’s hiring decision that will get praise. If he fails it will be your fault.
And if they ask you to hire your boss, it is quite a problem saying no. I will not talk about the ridiculous situation of being evaluated by somebody whom you hired, because it would take too long in this situation (will get back to that in the future)
We live in an age where bottom-up assessment is rare, and misused by HR and management to push policy rather than actually transmit a culture of openness. Even professional recruiters are challenged when they have to hire same-level or even junior people to them (let alone more senior) as there is a radicated “follow-me” culture which works well with 25 year olds and not too well with trained and skilled 40 year olds. These are additional reasons of why this is a very bad idea.
Oh, by the way, if you wanted that job and probably thought you were the perfect candidate this is the company’s way of saying “thanks, but no.”
Whatever your expectations, being set aside and THEN asked to do the dirty job is something you will not let lie. Unsure what to do? get out at the first valid opportunity. If you have a grain of self esteem, your should not work for careless and inadequate management, whatever the brand is.