This scene plays out too many times. A business rushes to fill a role, brings someone on who seemed fine in the interview, and six months later they’re starting the whole process over. The cost is always more than people expect.
It’s not just the salary. It’s everything around it.
The Direct Cost of a Bad Hire
Start with what you can count. Job posting fees, background checks, onboarding paperwork. Then the salary and benefits you paid for however many months they lasted.
If it was a sales role with a ramp-up period, you were paying full salary for someone who wasn’t generating revenue yet. The Department of Labor puts the average cost of a bad hire at about 30% of that person’s annual salary. For a rep making $60,000, that’s $18,000.
And that’s just the number you can put on paper.
What You Can’t Count
While your bad hire was in the seat, deals were slipping through the cracks. Prospects who should have been closed got weak pitches and went elsewhere. Existing customers may have gotten a worse experience. Your other reps were picking up slack, which took them away from their own pipeline.
Then there’s your time as a manager. The coaching sessions that didn’t lead anywhere. The difficult conversations. The documentation. The decision to let them go. All of that time came from somewhere, and it usually comes from the parts of the business that needed your attention most.
Starting Over
Now you’re posting the job again, screening applicants again, doing interviews again. But it’s worse the second time because your pipeline already took a hit, your team is tired, and the seat has been empty or badly filled for months.
Most roles take 60 to 90 days to fill the second time around. That’s another full quarter of lost production added to what you already lost.
Your Team is Watching
This is the part we don’t think enough business owners consider. Your team watched the whole thing happen. They saw someone get hired, struggle, and either leave or get let go.
If it happens once, nobody thinks much of it. If it happens again, your good people start to question things. And once your best performers lose confidence in the hiring process, they start looking elsewhere. Losing the people you want to keep is a much bigger problem than losing the one who didn’t work out.
How To Avoid It
The answer is not complicated. Don’t settle because the seat has been open too long and you feel pressure to fill it.
If you don’t have the bandwidth to run a thorough search, that’s what we do. We find candidates who fit the role and the company, and we take the time to get it right the first time.
Reach out to us before your next hire becomes your next mistake.