4 Unique Ways to Avoid Hiring Remorse in Your Security Management Team

Bringing in the wrong members to your management team, whether you promote from within or bring in an outside hire, can have disastrous results. When managers fail to maintain accountability or communicate effectively with employees, it has a ripple effect throughout your organization and can cost you multiple accounts.

To stop this from happening, it’s important to ask the right questions during the hiring process. That means going beyond the generic, standard interview questions and getting into a real conversation about how the applicant would fit on your team. Here are a few questions you can ask to more accurately judge the suitability of potential managers.

Want to go further? Read our recommendations for guard managers and operators: hire slow, fire fast.

1. How Would You Describe Our Company?

This question is best for if the candidate has come to you, rather than if it’s someone you’re actively recruiting. In that situation, of course, you want to define the image of your company in their minds to give the best possible impression.

However, if you are trying to choose between a number of candidates, this can be a great question to decide how serious someone is about the job and whether they share your mission. An un-serious candidate might give you a generic answer, while someone that really wants to work for you will have taken the time to research your company and understand your specific value proposition.

“Hiring someone that’s not totally engaged will be a problem that you will have to deal with month after month, week after week,” said Johnny Page, co-host of The Silvertrac Extra podcast. This question can separate those who are engaged from those who just view it as another job.

As a follow-up, you can ask candidates about what specific role they see for themselves in the company. Their answer here will show not just that they’ve researched your company but that they can see themselves as a contributing part of the team.

Follow-up questions that reveal a strong manager

• “Tell me about a time you held someone accountable.” Listen for specifics, fairness and follow-through.
• “A client calls at 2 a.m. about a missed patrol. What do you do?” You want calm prioritization, honest communication and a plan to prevent a repeat.
• “How do you use data to manage performance?” Strong managers talk about tour completion, response times and report quality, not just gut feel.
• “How would you get a new officer ready for a site?” This shows whether they value training and clear post orders.
• “What would you focus on in your first 90 days?” Good answers start with listening to officers, supervisors and clients.

The best candidates will also ask you questions, especially about your people, your clients and how the operation runs day to day.

2. The Layover Test

No matter how qualified and engaged a manager is, ultimately you need to have some level of personal compatibility. You’re going to be working in close quarters, and you have to get along with them and be able to communicate effectively.

As a test, after the interview, imagine being stuck on an extended layover with the candidate. You don’t have to be excited by the idea, but if the idea of spending a few hours alone with this person fills you with dread, how do you think you’re going to manage working with them day in and day out year after year?

Try to get input from other team members as well. A lot of people in your organization will have to work with this person, so make sure there are no obvious personality conflicts before you hire them.

Fit goes both ways. The right manager should reflect the culture you want your officers to experience. See whether your company culture is attracting the right security officers.

3. Do a Trial Run

Before you actually hire anyone, consider bringing in your preferred applicant to shadow some of your other managers for a couple days. This is a great way to make sure both parties totally understand how the position would work out if you do go forward in the hiring process.

From the applicant’s side, they get a chance to see their job in action and understand how it affects the various aspects of the company. For your own part, it’s a chance to see how quickly they can learn the various job requirements and to get a sense of the way they’d interact with people at all levels of your company.

It takes some extra work at first, but this investment really pays off. Dan Vincent of Vernon Security, who we interviewed all the way back in Episode 3, described developing people as the most important thing he can do as a business owner.

A simple two-day trial run plan

When	Shadow	What to watch for
Day 1, morning	Your operations manager during scheduling and call-offs	How they prioritize and stay calm under pressure
Day 1, afternoon	A supervisor on site visits	How they speak with officers and clients
Day 2, morning	A review of reports, tour data and dashboards in TrackTik	Whether they can spot patterns and ask good questions
Day 2, afternoon	A debrief with you	What they noticed, and what they would do differently

If the trial run involves real work, pay the candidate for their time and check the employment rules that apply in your location.

4. Could You Picture Yourself Handing This Person the Keys?

This is not about qualifications or training. Presumably any candidate you’re seriously considering will be qualified for the position, but even an inexperienced person can usually be taught standard operating procedures.

What you want to assess here are the things that can’t be taught: work ethic, accountability, honesty, and other inherent qualities. You want to hire someone that you can trust, that you can imagine going on vacation and turning over a key part of your business to them.

We talked to a British company recently that was launching in the U.S. and needed to hire a management team from scratch. What they ended up doing was hiring people from outside the industry, with the idea that the nuances of the industry could be taught, but the insights of bright and engaged people with different perspectives were irreplaceable.

Ultimately, the key is to have a well-defined process where you’re asking these questions of yourself and the applicant every step of the way. Be clear with your expectations, and let applicants know the timeline of the hiring process so that everyone’s on the same page.

Set new managers up to succeed in their first 90 days

1. Days 1 to 30: Learn the operation. Meet officers, supervisors and key clients, visit every site and learn your systems. The Trackforce Academy offers self-paced TrackTik courses with 24/7 access.
2. Days 31 to 60: Take ownership. Hand over a defined group of sites or accounts, with clear expectations and regular check-ins.
3. Days 61 to 90: Review results. Measure performance against agreed goals such as tour completion, incident response, overtime and client feedback.

Hiring well is only half the job. Our series on managing supervisors, starting with the owner’s dilemma, covers what comes next.

How TrackTik Helps You Hand Over the Keys with Confidence

Trusting a new manager is easier when you can see the operation without micromanaging it. TrackTik gives owners and managers the same clear view:

• Live field visibility. TrackTik Guard Management shows tours, incidents, daily activity and time and attendance as they happen.
• Clear performance data. TrackTik Business Intelligence turns operational data into dashboards and KPIs you can review together.
• Controlled labor costs. TrackTik People Management provides overtime prevention tools and live labor cost tracking, so new managers make informed scheduling decisions.

Book a TrackTik demo to see how your management team could run on one platform.