[lsc]

"hire slowly, fire fast"

sounds like good advice to me. I'm surprised how hard most people seem to find firing people. I mean it's usually pretty clear within the first month or so if you made a mistake, and at that point it's not like they have a lot of company-specific knowledge, so I think at that point, often it's best to apologize to the (now ex) employee for the hiring mistake and part ways.

Hiring good people is hard, and you are bound to make mistakes. It seems to me like you need to have a procedure for correcting same.