Should You Ever Hire a Friend? A Manager’s Guide to Doing It Right

Hiring is rarely simple. But few leadership decisions feel as emotionally charged or as risky as hiring a friend. When someone you trust and care about raises their hand for a role on your team, it can feel like both an opportunity and a potential leadership landmine. Will it strengthen the team or strain the relationship? Will it boost trust or create perceptions of favoritism? Will it bring you two closer together or destroy the friendship?

According to organizational behavior expert Dr. Cindi Baldi, hiring friends is not inherently a bad idea. In fact, done thoughtfully, it can result in some of your strongest hires. The key is understanding the real risks, being honest about the power dynamics involved, and putting the right structures in place before you say yes.

This article explores when hiring a friend makes sense, when it doesn’t, and how managers can navigate the decision with clarity, fairness, and confidence.

Why Hiring a Friend Feels So Risky

The most common fear managers express is straightforward: What if it ruins the friendship? Leaders worry about what happens if performance issues arise, if feedback is taken personally, or if the role simply doesn’t work out. There’s also the uncomfortable possibility of having to fire someone you care about.

But beneath these concerns is something deeper. Hiring a friend doesn’t just change their experience of you; it changes your exposure. At work, your leadership habits, decision-making style, and conflict skills are no longer abstract. Your friend will experience them firsthand. If you’re not confident in how you show up as a manager, that vulnerability can feel threatening.

Another risk is subtle but significant: confusing a “favor” with a fair exchange. When managers hire friends because they want to help them, rather than because the friend brings real value to the role, the relationship becomes unbalanced. That imbalance is often what damages both performance and trust over time.

The Hidden Advantage of Hiring Someone You Know Well

Despite the risks, hiring a friend can offer a powerful upside: information. Managers rarely know as much about a candidate as they think they do. Resumes and interviews only show a slice of reality. With friends, you often have years of insight.

You know whether they are reliable. You’ve seen how they handle stress, disappointment, feedback, and accountability. You know if they follow through, show integrity, and genuinely want to grow. These traits like conscientiousness, emotional maturity, and learning orientation, are some of the strongest predictors of success at work, yet they are notoriously hard to assess in traditional hiring processes.

When managers hire friends responsibly, they are not “lowering the bar.” They are often raising it by selecting someone whose character and behavior they already understand.

Skills Still Come First

Liking someone is not a qualification.

One of the easiest traps managers fall into is overestimating a friend’s capabilities because of affection, loyalty, or familiarity. Wanting to collaborate with someone you enjoy does not replace the need for core skills, relevant experience, and role readiness.

A useful test is this: If this person were not my friend, would I still want to hire them? If the answer is no or even “I’m not sure,” that hesitation matters.

In some cases, the role may be trainable, and potential matters more than polish. In others, the cost of a mis-hire is simply too high. Being honest about the demands of the job protects both the business and the friendship.

The Power Dynamics You Can’t Ignore

Friendships are not power-neutral. Even among close peers, there are often unspoken dynamics around confidence, status, and influence. When one friend becomes the other’s manager, those dynamics intensify.

If the manager is clearly more senior, more experienced, or already acting as a mentor, the transition can work smoothly. But if the friend views themselves as an equal or believes they could do the manager’s job better, the relationship may become tense and resistant to authority.

Ignoring these dynamics doesn’t make them disappear. Managers must assess not only whether they are comfortable managing a friend, but also whether the friend is genuinely comfortable being managed by them.

How to Reduce Bias and the Perception of Favoritism

Even when a friend is highly qualified, other team members may still question the fairness of the decision. Perception matters almost as much as reality.

One effective strategy is to step back from the final decision. Involving a hiring panel, empowering other interviewers, or removing yourself from the evaluation process can protect credibility and psychological safety. When the team selects the best candidate rather than “your friend,” it shifts the story from favoritism to fairness.

This approach also protects the friend. If they are not chosen, the decision is about fit, not about your personal judgment or loyalty.

Set Expectations Before Day One

If you do hire a friend, the most important conversation should happen before they start.

Think of it as a professional “prenup.” Both parties should be clear about what success looks like, how feedback will be handled, and what happens if the role no longer makes sense. Discuss career goals openly. Acknowledge that the job may be temporary and that leaving one day is not a betrayal.

Managers should also be explicit about boundaries. Work information stays at work. Friendship does not mean access to confidential decisions or exceptions without explanation. When exceptions do happen, as they sometimes must, there should be a shared understanding of how transparency will be handled to avoid team resentment.

Similarly, friends who work together cannot confide in each other about work the same way they once did. Discussing shared experiences outside of work may not be appropriate workplace chatter.

Being explicit about these limits helps preserve the friendship rather than damage it. When expectations are named, people are less likely to feel confused or betrayed.

When a Friend Wants the Job but Isn’t the Right Fit

One of the hardest moments comes when a friend asks to apply, and you already know the answer should be no.

The safest option is to lean on process: encourage them to apply, be honest about the lack of guarantees, and allow the system to do its job. This avoids direct rejection but may feel evasive.

In many cases, a kinder and more respectful approach is an honest conversation. Managers can acknowledge the interest while explaining that the role requires skills or experience the friend doesn’t yet have. Importantly, “not right for this role” does not mean “not talented.”

Offering to make introductions, references, or guidance toward better-fit opportunities allows you to support the friendship without compromising the organization.

Personal Behavior Predicts Professional Behavior

A critical insight for managers is this: people don’t become different versions of themselves at work. If a friend struggles with feedback, avoids conflict, shuts down emotionally, or takes things personally in personal relationships, those patterns are likely to appear on the job as well.

That doesn’t make them bad people. It simply means the role or the reporting relationship is not a good fit. Hiring someone whose behavior you already know will make performance conversations painful is not compassionate leadership.

A Thoughtful Decision, Not a Default No

Hiring a friend doesn’t have to be taboo. It does, however, require more intention than hiring a stranger. Managers who succeed in these situations are clear-eyed about skills, honest about power, proactive about boundaries, and willing to prioritize fairness over comfort.

When those conditions are met, hiring a friend can be a win for the organization, the team, and the relationship. When they aren’t, the bravest leadership move may be saying no with care, clarity, and respect.

Listen to the entire episode HERE to learn more about what to do when considering hiring a friend.

Keep up with Cindi Baldi

- Connect with Cindi on LinkedIn here

- Follow Management Muse on LinkedIn here

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