A poor hire can literally cost your company millions. This isn’t an exaggeration, but a hard truth. The inability to close large, multi-year deals with complex moving parts, the inability to solve a critical product development problem, the inability to drive a project through to completion – these are all potential million dollar losses. The list goes on. And the more senior the position, the greater the amplification of those misses.
But there’s more to the story. The losses don’t end there.
A poor hire can literally cost us millions personally. Millions in lost opportunity, unrealized potential, and derailed career aspirations. Over the course of a career, a poor hire impacts our ability to secure a promotion to the C-suite, to effectively delegate with confidence, to demonstrate we have the skills and ability to attract, select, and secure the talent that makes strategy a reality.
Building an organization is not only about seizing market opportunities and shipping on time. Sure, that’s part of it. But the real work of organization building lies in the difficult process of selecting the right people with the right strengths and deploying the right skills at the right time.
A poor hire is one of the most costly mistakes leaders make, yet more often than not the time, effort, and attention invested in the search process – particularly at the beginning – is anemic. So, the next time you are faced with the prospect of a critical hire and you think “I don’t have time for this”, consider the implications and the real cost – to both your organization and yourself.
