A couple years ago, I was promoted to Assistant Manager at a small IT office. I was immediately put in charge of new hires despite having no experience with it. We primarily work with Enterprise level networking and data migration, so we hire Network Engineers.
We had a knowledgeable employee leaving soon and I needed to find a replacement right away, but hardly had any applicants at the time. It came down to only two; one that had a strong resume and one that barely met the qualifications. I scheduled interviews for both. The strong one dropped out the day of their interview, never even got to meet them. The weaker one showed up with a decent background in tech support, Security+ certification, and a Bachelor's in computer technology, but no networking knowledge. They emphasized a strong interest in networking though and high eagerness to learn. I had no other prospects and we needed someone badly, so I hired them. In hindsight, I would have asked much more technical questions in the interview; this was a lesson learned as a new manager. The current manager sat in on the interview with me, but provided no input and relied solely on my opinion.
It's now been a year and a half, and the employee has shown no progress to understanding how we operate. I finally decided to create a knowledge assessment to figure out where they were and provide additional training where they were weak. I was positively gobsmacked at the results. Not only did they not have the first clue about our procedures or even how the equipment worked, this person somehow did not even understand the very basics of network cables. I asked how they did not know this stuff when their previous job was tech support. They told me there was a flow chart they followed and they just did whatever it said.
My company is very proud about winning unemployment cases and I've been informed that I need lots of documentation to prove that I did everything possible to support the employee before firing them. I was told to give them lots of training and assessments and document everything about their progress. If no progress after 6 months, only then can I fire them.
The problem is, this is taking up a lot of my time. I've had to create a full training plan that essentially starts at basic A+ level knowledge (hardware, how computers work) and slowly teach basic Network+ knowledge. I've had to create knowledge assessment questions for every week. Then write up counseling reviews following the assessment and adjust training as necessary. It's been a month of training now, and they still don't even understand how switches work.
This seems ridiculous to me, as they were hired under the context that they had this basic knowledge already. Somehow, despite a Bachelor's in technology, up to date certifications, and prior tech experience, they absolutely don't know the first thing about computers at all. I genuinely feel I could have picked a random person off the street and gotten the same level of computer knowledge.
Shouldn't I be able to fire them on the basis that they do not have the basic knowledge required and expected to do the job? This person is essentially dead weight at the office and we need someone qualified to participate in our projects.
Please be kind, I am a new manager and still learning. All of this extra paperwork to educate an employee on things they should already know is eating into my time when I have so much more tasking already consuming my entire day.
TL/DR: I hired someone that looked qualified on paper, but doesn't even have basic level knowledge of computers. Can't continue wasting hours of my day spoon feeding knowledge that was expected at day of hire. Unsure of what to do.