Are you worried about your hiring process taking too much time?
One day, I spoke to the CEO of a company in a bit of distress, to put it mildly. I won’t describe the situation in detail. However, let’s say they are pretty light on leadership and deal with some pressure from investors, while struggling to fulfill customer obligations and stay afloat.
We were talking about their hiring process, with me asking specifically whether they use Topgrading. Their words were, “Given the company’s situation I’m not sure we have the luxury of Topgrading.” That really struck me. Yes, I understand their situation. I understand that a company like that seemingly has little to offer to A-players (which inspired me to write another card, you may need to wait for that one to come up). Topgrading is a time-intensive process (in the short term), that may feel hard to justify amongst towering blazes. However….
Mis-hires, especially on the leadership team, have a massive effect. The Topgrading team (and I trust them) are talking about impact easily on the order of 15x of the salary. And that’s just the dollars! How about time? One bad hire sets the whole team, and with it the whole company, back with a long road to recovering. If one is lucky and quick to act, they find out within a quarter, start hiring again (with all the opportunity cost that this effort carries), so perhaps they lose “only” 2 quarters? And that is as long as the bad hire hasn’t created too much damage during their short tenure.
A whole two quarters (and let’s be clear, this is a very, very rare absolutely best case bad scenario) of getting back to where you started, with all company efforts wasted. As compared to the good scenario of having the right person, who brings in new competencies while lightening the accountability load for the rest of the team. Also, as compared to not actually hiring anyone (perhaps no one good was available).
Just do the math. Add up the cost (both in $$ and effort/time) of:
- Recruitment and hiring (that’s where you “saved” by skimming over the process)
- Onboarding
- Their salary while employed
- Time managing them & finding out it doesn’t work
- Time trying to “save the hire” by working with them
- Management time required for the decision to free up their future
- Offboarding, re-assignment of responsibilities
- Recruitment and hiring AGAIN (done right this time, hopefully)
- Onboarding AGAIN
Now, fair, we should only count the onboarding once, and give some discount to the recruitment and hiring item. But the point stands. Now compare that with actually having the right hire – the recruitment and hiring may be more expensive in money and effort, but instead of all the cost of the following items, we actually get the value of an A-player joining our team.
Having the wrong person in a role is much, much worse than not having anyone there at all. While no system completely eliminates hiring mistakes, we’ve seen Topgrading specifically increase the chances of success at least 3 times (again, to borrow from their stats, from 25% to ~90%). Our (Metronomics coaches’) own experience rather supports these findings. However anecdotal in the big scheme of things our coaches experience may be, the numbers are proven with Topgrading.
Going back to my friend – they don’t have two quarters. If this doesn’t go well, there will be no do-over. Topgrading is not a luxury for their hiring- it’s a survival necessity.
How about you? Did you ever take a shortcut in your hiring process, only to regret it later?
