The True Cost of the Wrong Hire

It’s no secret that the recruitment process can be a daunting task for any business, and hiring the right candidate is often a bigger challenge than it may first appear.

Business leaders we speak to (before working with us) say that recruiting team members, particularly at a senior level, often feels like placing a bet, and it’s a bet that they can’t be sure of.

By cutting corners, and not doing their due diligence, organisations are placing their bets on the wrong people. As a result, they are missing out on a huge amount of potential value that can be created when the right people are brought on board, as well as losing out significantly in terms of time and money.

For small, start up or scale up organisations, this can be a challenge. Leaders in these businesses are time-poor, with their priorities dedicated to the task at hand and their objectives laser-focused to help drive growth. Often, these entrepreneurs don’t have managerial or leadership experience. They don’t know how to build a team around them that will help them achieve their ambitions – it simply isn’t their area of expertise.

This can often lead to businesses bringing in people who might have the experience they need on paper, but don’t fit within the business structure or culture.

A poor fit can be a drain both financially and in terms of productivity for the business. This isn’t only the case if they decide to leave the role shortly after being hired, leading to a need to start the search process all over again, but also if they decide to stay in their position.

If, for example, the new hire clashes with the existing leadership team and doesn’t agree with the direction of the business, it could significantly delay progress, requiring a huge amount of negotiation and back and forth to reach a place in which everyone agrees.

By the time you realise that perhaps they weren’t the right choice for the business in the first place, it’s already too late. Valuable time and money have been lost, leading to the difficult questions: what could have been done with the right person in position? What could you have done with the money you have spent on hiring and keeping them in the business?

Conversely, the value that the right hire can bring is priceless. It's this value – both in terms of monetary value and the value that is brought about by knowledge and experience – that small and scale up businesses can’t afford to miss out on.

Getting the right employees on board ensures they grow with you, contributing to your overall success as a business, and reducing the need to hire again and again for each new leadership position you may develop down the line. So, do your due diligence and invest the time and resources needed to make sure your business feels the true value of a great hire.

One way we help our clients to do this is by conducting a leadership team benchmarking exercise. Everyone understanding their own, and their colleagues, personalities, thought processes and communications preferences can be transformative for the existing team. It is also a great aid to ensuring the next hires both ‘fit’ with the team, bring the right differences and challenges and help new hires to know better and quicker their leadership colleagues.

If you’d like to know more about how we support cleantech start-ups and scale-ups, hire right and build winning, high performance leadership teams, please get in touch for an informal conversation.