Read time: 3 min, 11 secs

Hey there - it's Brian 👋

I made a bad hire.

And it almost cost me my biggest client.

The guy was BRILLIANT. Checked all the boxes.

But had one hidden flaw that I didn’t see coming.

I don’t want you to make the same mistake.

This issue is for you if you’re about to hire (& don’t want to hire the wrong person).

Let’s make your business an outlier: 👇

So a few years ago, I had a consulting team building systems for a bank.

Their processes were so bad they lost customers.

So I consulted them to:
➟ Make things faster
➟ Run on their own
➟ Buy people time back

We had 2 months to deliver.

So I hired this guy in India to speed things up.

The guy was BRILLIANT.

He did the grunt work while I did the strategy. We had to deliver fast.

🚨 But our new hire had one major issue:
Anytime there was a problem…

He stopped working.

Seriously. I’m not kidding. He just stopped.

He’d wait I asked how things were going… then ask me to solve it for him.

The project slowed. We were about to miss the deadline. And lose the client.

So I fired him.

We had to replace him FAST.

In the meantime, my team had to work double to make up for his loss.

The stress was insane:
➟ Team was anxious
➟ I missed my weekend trip with my girlfriend
➟ And the client wasn’t happy

We lost 1 month. 4 weeks to go.

But I had to do interviews WHILE we were already falling behind on a project that was on fire with the client threatening to leave.

We found a generalist.

That person found a simpler solution. Saved the client.

One bad hire almost cost us our biggest client.

So when I built TalentHQ, I took all those learnings from hiring for our consulting team and put them into our recruiting process.

I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve built.

Bad hires cost more than you think.

So learn from my experience so you don’t have to make those mistakes too: 👇

How much does a bad hire actually cost you?

I hate those articles that say every bad hire costs you $50,000.

Because it every situation is different.

In my case we would have lost the next phase of work.

Meaning that bad hire actually cost us $300,000 - $500,000!

But that’s an extreme case.

People think about the salary, but they’re shocked when they look at all the hidden costs that go into a bad hire: 👇

1) Paying the talent’s salary (in return for no results)

Salary ranges.

If you’re hiring US it could be $5 - $8k a month for marketing or admin roles.

Hire in LatAm and that same role will cost around $1.5k.

There’s lower cost countries (like the Philippines) but LatAm has the best balance of low cost for great quality.

I do all my hires for TalentHQ in LatAm.

2) Training costs (paying management to train them):

Sure management salary is a real cost.

But more important is the opportunity cost.

What value are you NOT creating because you waste time training a bad hire?

(AND you spend that same time again training the right hire)

🧔🏻‍♂️ Brian’s nerdy side rant:

Btw do you want me to share my training program? Reply “training” if you do.

3) Fixing mistakes:

What mistakes did the bad hire make that you now need to fix?

➟ Mess up client relations (& lose a client)?
➟ Mess up data in your CRM (so you miss reaching out to people)?
➟ Make bad SOPs (& other employees don’t do your process right)?

You hired people to build leverage.

Best part about leverage? Results compound.

Worst part about leverage? Mistakes compound.

4) Spending time searching AGAIN:

“I take 25 hours per talent to get it right!”

If you do it right, going through resumes + reviewing their pilot projects + interviewing takes a long time.

We just had a client start with us because she needed her time back. She told us she takes 25 hours per role (but didn’t want to give up quality).

So she got our membership. That way she can hire 5 offshore folks without sacrificing quality.

She bought back 125 hours for just $2k / hire.

How much is an hour of your time worth?

$500? $1,000? $2,000?

5) Disrupting team culture:

You’ve worked hard to get the right people into the right roles.

These people are great.

But if you bring in someone who’s not a great fit, your “B-players” (if you have them) will think that’s the new bar.

Your “A-players” will get frustrated they’re slowing down.

Your team won’t want to work as hard. And you risk great people leaving.

That’s expensive.

🧔🏻‍♂️ Brian’s nerdy side rant:

I have a hot take on A vs B vs C players.

I’ll save it for another time.

6) Risking your reputation:

This risk almost lost my client!

Your brand is just how others perceive you.

Do people think you can deliver the promises you made?

If a bad hire can’t deliver, your brand is at risk. Clients may not recommend you.

Negative press spreads fast.

So what can you do to make sure you don’t have a bad hire?

Let me use an overused analogy for a sec.

Your business is a row boat.

You’re the captain.

So it’s your job to be selective and choose who gets in your boat.

If you haven’t recruited before, you’ll need someone who can find enough people to apply AND help you figure out who’s good.

If you have done it before, you know it’s wildly time consuming. So you need to buy your time back.

For context:
We had a Project Manager role last week get close to 600 applicants.

You should NOT be sifting through 600 resumes.

But you DO need to talk to the final candidates to make sure they get your mission and how you row together.

If you want help, I’m here to chat.

See you next Thursday 👋

Brian
[email protected]
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