The Staggering Cost of Leadership Hiring Mistakes

We are all aware a leadership hiring mistake is costly. However recent research conducted by The Harvard Business Review shows the sheer enormity of the cost involved.

Taking into account expenses such as severance pay, recruitment fees and damage to reputation, the study illustrates that the costs of a hiring mistake can reach up to 15 times a key leader’s base salary.

Over and above, it also highlighted that the repercussions from such a mistake may be felt for years afterwards. Specifically, recovery takes an estimated two years or more in some cases.

In an analysis of the S&P, 1,500 businesses alone showed they had lost almost $1 trillion in market value due to incorrect hiring judgement calls at the boardroom level.

The challenge of finding, robustly assessing and hiring is not new, but the costs of getting it wrong are becoming more visible than ever before.

Leadership Talent is a real differentiator to most companies and sectors. However, getting it wrong can have a majorly negative impact and in some cases disastrous consequences.

So how do companies achieve far more winning leadership hires?

Over and above selecting the right Executive Partner who has the network, sourcing capability and expertise to find and introduce top talent, it’s often the lack of robustness and appropriateness of the assessment process used in the selection that causes the mistake to be made.

Assessment tools have developed considerably over the years. Today there are an array of insightful assessment tools available that forensically measure leaders’ key competencies, behaviours, styles and traits. Blending ‘fit for purpose’ assessments into the selection process will by their robust nature, greatly reduce the potential for a mistake.

Having undertaken a deep dive into the analysis of the full cost of such mistakes, here at PartnerWise we have built the most robust suite of selection tools and processes from which a customer can select. Our evaluations include the highly insightful Hogan suite of assessments, of which we are practitioners.

Combined with the most sophisticated of 24/7 AI sourcing technology to find the globally located top talent in the first instance, our assessment tools and capability enable our customers to experience the power of getting their leadership hire right the first time.

For us, it means that 92% of customers who use us once: repeat.

To share further insights and findings and/ or to find out how we can support please connect at hello@partnerwise.co.uk