The Consolation Hire

The board of directors meeting was going along well enough when we reached an agenda item called Personnel. I offered an update on our search for an operations leader, explaining to the board that we had been aggressively recruiting, but after several months had still not landed on the right candidate. As I continued, one of our more outspoken board members interrupted my update. “I’m tired of talking about this.”

While the candor caught me off guard, it was hard to disagree that the search had dragged on too long and we were losing valuable time in not filling the position. Other members nodded their heads in agreement and chimed in with similar sentiments. The message to me as their CEO was clear, get this position filled before our next meeting.

Over the next 30 days, the search firm turned up several more candidates and, though I conducted interview after interview, they still hadn’t identified a candidate that I thought had the right skills, abilities, attitudes, beliefs and behaviors to fill the role. The clock was ticking toward our next board meeting and I didn’t have the right person.

What should I have done? I should have contacted each board member in advance of the meeting, explained to them that despite our efforts we still hadn’t landed on the right person for the role, took the hit for not meeting their expectation and explained that avoiding the consequences of making the wrong hire was far more important that filling the position immediately.

What did I actually do? I picked the best candidate from the group I had interviewed, even though I had strong doubts about their ability to excel in the position, made an offer that was accepted and reported to our board that we had our person. Bad decision. I eventually had to replace the person I had hired with the right candidate, but only after losing precious time trying to help the first candidate succeed in a role I doubted they could perform in the first place.

Regrettably, that’s not the only time I settled for a substandard candidate for an open position for a lack of impressive candidates. It never ended well, but I think I have finally learned my lesson. Never, ever compromise and hire a person unless you’re confident they will succeed in the role. There are several reasons.

First, as suggested, filling a position with the wrong candidate is costly. It’s costly because we run the risk of paying a person who doesn’t add value to our organization. It’s costly because we lose time. It’s costly because we miss out on the improvements that could have been made and the value that could have been added during the time we lost.

Second, it’s not fair to our high-performing team members to be burdened by an underperforming teammate.

Third, we lose credibility with our team if we are perceived to have compromised our standards in letting an underperformer onto the team.

Fourth, it’s really not fair to the candidate we compromised on. Putting someone in a position for which they are not qualified is setting them up for failure. That’s unethical.

Rather than settling, find ways to be even more aggressive in recruiting. Promote your open positions on social media; ask your team members and professional network for referrals; use a recruiter and reach out to your entire professional network with an email to market the position; and get more creative with flextime, schedules and remote work. Even consider paying more than your perception of market compensation for the right candidate before settling for the wrong one.

I learned the hard way to never, ever settle for the wrong team member. Always, always have the discipline to wait for the right candidate and have a strategy to aggressively seek them out.