Hiring and firing staff team members. It's one of the worst things you have to do as a Forum Administrator, yet one of the most critical aswell.

Hiring and firing staff members is one of the hardest things to do as an Administrator. You don't want to hire the wrong people, you want to make sure you hire well-liked people, and you want to make sure, above all, that you can feel safe letting them have abilities to manage your forum.

If only all staff members could be excellent, do exactly what you want when you want them to do it, and were online 24/7. However, that's not possible. There are some good staff members, and bad staff members. Of course you'd like to avoid the bad ones, so when you're selecting a staff member you look for certain qualities in them which would make them be able to do their job a lot easier. Many Administrators have varied ideas when it comes to what qualities they'd like to see in their staff, but generally they look for people with good people skills, good communication skills, and good skills with the software the forum is operating through.

Those are the basic qualities that any good staff member would need, and if they don't have them well then they really couldn't be a good staff member. Remember, you need your Moderators and workers to do a job - And if they don't have the appropriate skills for that job, then why select them? You need to be convinced that their skills and weaknesses even out, and that they are the right person to take on the job.

Choosing the bad staff members can have disastrous consequences. They could get angry one day and delete a lot of crucial things, they could mistreat a certain member to the degree that the member leaves your forum and never returns... There's a hell of a lot of things they could do to wreak havoc on your forum, and it's your job to stop that from happening.

So, you need to know how to fire staff members in a proper and professional manner. Firstly, you should talk things out with the staff member... Make sure that they are aware of what they're doing is wrong, and make sure that you still feel you can trust them. If any of these are answered as a no, remove them immediately. If you feel they have done something wrong and they apologize for it, let it go. Give them another chance. Believe me, having a high staff turnover doesn't look good for your forum and will always be a bad thing, especially if you have a lot of users and they are noticing it dramatically.

I hate high staff turn overs, especually when the forum needs alot of staff, and the staff member just decided to up and leave :'(

I find, that, when hiring staff, you advertise that your looking, then you close the add after a few applications, watch those few staff members for a week or 2, then tell them their on trial - in the staff room, to see how they'd go with the team. At this point, if they don't work well, they get the boot, if they do work well, they go on 'public' trial, in which they can moderate.
After about 2-4 weeks, they either pass, or fail based on their recent performance.
If they pass, I like to have them on the team for a minimal for 6 months, but I know bad things happen, and that generally means, we have to leave the internet for a little while, which I totally understand, and allow them to leave.

Just about the skills, you can always make your time to show them the moderation skills yourself. Some people cling to the first community they join and have no previous experiences but can be mature and if you think they fill the rest of your criteria, give it a go teaching them the details they don't know.

That aside, it is a very good guide and I enjoyed reading it. I like the way you make people aware of how bad can bad staff choice be. I also like Darren's method to try out new staff.