When a hire goes right everyone wins. The new hire is empowered and unleashed to lead in their sweet spot, the team is invigorated, and the church benefits from seeing the mission take ground. But when a hire goes wrong everyone loses, and I mean everyone. A hire gone wrong will cost you more than you think. Check out the list below…
#1 Money
This may be a bit of a no-brainer. But think about it. How much money does it cost you to recruit, hire, pay, discover you’ve made the wrong hire, exit, and then go out and make another hire? Not to mention loss of momentum and opportunity. One study stated that when a hire goes wrong and ends in termination it will cost the company 15x the annual salary.
#2 Time
Let’s quantify this for a moment. Let’s imagine the average search takes 3-6 months from start to finish. Let’s say it takes 6 months to identify that you’ve made a mistake and hired the wrong person, attempted to really work with them, and then exit them. There’s probably a little severance in there, after all you made the wrong hire. Say another 3-6 months for another search. Give the new hire somewhere around a year to clean up the mess of a start and stop and get back to even. On the short end that’s 2 years gone, and that’s probably a conservative estimate!
#3 Opportunities
Simple question: how many opportunities have you missed in those 2 years? Just let it sit there for a moment…that question should haunt you.
#4 Leadership Capital
Now here’s the part that should scare you into sober mindedness. How many hires gone wrong can your leadership endure? How many leadership credits are you willing to spend on this, because at the end of the day a wrong hire reflects poorly on you and erodes your leadership.
Need help building a hiring process at your church? Let’s talk.
Leave a Reply