Every time a team needs to make a hire, the need is urgent. Hires are made because some work urgently needs to get done. And that work nearly always fall on the rest of the team and the manager.
You can’t get a person in seat fast enough.
And yet, that’s when most hiring managers make the cardinal mistake. They settle. They over-weight the interviews or how good it looks on paper. They ignore a warning sign or don’t pressure test their assumptions with references. But their short-term pressure is alleviated.
Sometimes they get lucky, and the hire works out great. Often however, they find themselves dealing with one small problem after another for a sustained period of time.
Until the realization dawns that they made the wrong hire. They then come to that painful realization – the cost of the hire was significantly more than they thought.
And then the cycle repeats again.
It only stops when we internalize one truth – an open seat on the bus is always better than having the wrong person.
Never rush a hire.
