my new employee is “disappointed” with his job

A reader writes:

I’m a new-ish manager in a small company. I have two direct reports. One is professional and a joy to work with. The other is a recent hire (he’s been here two months) who is right out of college, Jake.

In our most recent weekly one-on-one, Jake told me that he is “disappointed in the role” and the work is “not as interesting as he hoped.” I can understand how someone could find much of the work tedious. There’s a significant amount of data entry in the position. But I never hid this. I was clear with every candidate I interviewed that there would be tedious tasks and screened for people who seemed able to figure out strategies for handling that tedium.

I’m wondering where to go from here. Jake was not able to give me any clear idea about what he wants the role to be instead, and even if he could, I hired him for the job he’s doing now.

Part of me also feels like he hasn’t given this a fair shake. He’s only been here two months! A lot of those tedious tasks will start taking up less of his time as he gets better at them so he can expand other parts of the role, and I have told him that this is what I expect.

And lastly, I’m not sure how much investment I want to put into someone who has expressed such disinterest so early. He has also had a couple of attitude problems that I have been addressing (he can come across as entitled and arrogant, which is not a good look for the most junior member of our staff), but those by themselves, I felt were coachable.

I answer this question over at Inc. today, where I’m revisiting letters that have been buried in the archives here from years ago (and sometimes updating/expanding my answers to them). You can read it here.

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