Advice: I got my cousin a sales job at my company, but he's not taking it seriously. What can I do?
4 min read
Advice: I got my cousin a sales job at my company, but he's not taking it seriously. What can I do?

I put myself in a complicated situation, and it's entirely my own fault. I'm an Account Executive at a public software company, and it's definitely the best sales job I've ever had. It took me a while to break into software sales, so I'm super thankful for the opportunity, especially given the crap sales jobs I had to wade through before I got here.

Here's the problem: about six months ago, my cousin started asking me to get him a job at my company. He's definitely a smart guy, but he tends to get himself into trouble. He flunked out of college after partying too much and then bounced around a lot career-wise. He was in the restaurant industry, then started a t-shirt screen-printing business that failed because he didn't hustle for clients, and then eventually he went into sales. He sold telecom and then worked for a small software development firm but got laid off when the pandemic hit, or at least that's what he told everyone.

Long story short, I finally gave in and (against my judgment) got him in here into a Business Development Rep role. He started a month and a half ago and he's already called out sick twice, and just seems to be completely disengaged and uninterested in working his way up the way I did.

Now, not only am I worried that he's going to lose his job, and our family is going to somehow blame me for it, I'm also stressed that his performance, and the fact that I vouched for him is going to reflect badly on me. I'm serious about working my way up here, and want to get into management, but I feel like I really screwed up trying to make my family happy, and now I'm going to pay the price. What should I do?

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