Your gut feeling just cost you four million dollars.
I watched a business owner ignore every red flag I gave him about a CEO candidate. His reason? "I just know he's the right one."
Six months later, he fired that CEO and paid out $1.5 million in severance. Add the lost revenue and the great people who left, and the total damage hit north of $4 million.
The kicker? I told him exactly why this would happen.
Why "Gut Feel" Fails
When I asked the owner why he was so sure about this candidate, here's what he told me: "We have the same interests. We're wired the same way. We get along great. He's just like me."
There was no meat to any of it. He couldn't articulate anything concrete.
He was hiring himself. That's the problem.
My structured interview revealed what his emotions missed. The candidate was just like the owner - unstructured, big ideas, but zero track record of real success. When I dug into what he claimed he accomplished, it was actually other people who did the work. His ability to complete things was terrible.
The owner was attracted to his own weaknesses without even knowing it.
Your Hiring Team Is Working Against Itself
This isn't just one bad story. Hiring mistakes happen to 75% of employers every year. Yet most never look at why their process sucks.
Here's what I see everywhere: Your hiring team doesn't compare notes beforehand. They don't figure out what questions to ask or what a good answer looks like versus a bad one.
They're running separate interviews for different jobs of the same title.
Picture this - your team walks into a CEO interview without a plan. The HR person focuses on culture fit. The board member thinks about strategy. The department head looks at operations.
Everyone's measuring different stuff.
Everyone defines success differently.
Everyone reaches different conclusions.
Result? Contradictory feedback, confused discussions, and terrible decisions.
What Winging It Really Costs You
The numbers don't lie. Success rates are around 43%. That means 57% of your hires will underperform or fail.
The Department of Labor says each bad hire costs up to 30% of their first-year wages. For an $80,000 employee, that's $24,000 in direct costs.
But here's what really hurts: Bad hires kill team morale, damage customer relationships, and slow everything down. They don't just fail individually - they drag everyone else down with them.
And when it all goes wrong? Most leaders blame the candidates instead of looking at their broken process.
How to Fix Your Broken Process
Structured hiring works. When organizations implement our Talent Blueprint process, success rates jump from 50% to over 70%. That's a 40% improvement.
Here's how it works. We start where most hiring ends - with results, not job descriptions.
Step 1: Define Specific Results
Set clear OKRs for the role that are specific and time-bound. What exactly must this person achieve in 90 days, six months, and one year?
Step 2: Identify the Behavioral Profile
Most leaders never do this. They assume they know what personality traits drive success. They're usually wrong.
Map the specific behavioral profile needed. Is this role about building relationships or driving results? Innovation or execution? Get specific.
Step 3: Define Cognitive Thresholds
Different roles need different types of thinking. Strategic positions need systems thinking. Operations needs process optimization. Technical roles demand problem-solving.
Define the minimum cognitive requirements before you meet anyone.
Step 4: Structure Your Interview Questions
Decide who asks what questions and what a good answer looks like versus a bad one. Train your team to spot the difference.
Example: Ask about implementing large-scale changes. A good answer focuses on overcoming specific challenges with detailed rollout plans. A bad answer? "We never have challenges" or "We just implemented it."
Step 5: Score Everything
Create scoring for each question. Remove subjective interpretation. Make decisions based on data, not feelings.
"We Don't Have Time for That"
The most common pushback I get? "We don't have time for all that process."
Really? You have time to replace the wrong candidate? LOL!
These same leaders will spend months dealing with bad hires, doing damage control, and starting the search over. They'll waste countless hours on performance improvement plans, rebuilding teams, and fixing customer relationships.
But they won't spend a few hours preventing the problem.
Why Your Instincts Are Wrong
The resistance goes deeper than time. It challenges how leaders see themselves.
Many executives think they're great at reading people. They believe their experience gives them special insight. They trust their gut over systematic evaluation.
Here's the truth: Your emotions lie to you. That's why marketers appeal to your feelings instead of logic.
Hiring based on emotion produces emotional outcomes - disappointment, frustration, and regret.
Objective processes produce objective results - better hires, stronger teams, measurable success.
What You Can Do Right Now
You can start this before your next interview.
First - start with results, not job descriptions. Define what success looks like in measurable terms.
Second - structure your interview questions and decide who asks what. Stop the overlap and make sure you cover everything.
Third - know what a good answer sounds like before you hear it. Score the answers.
Take the time to do it right so you don't have to redo it.
Your choice: Keep trusting your gut and accepting 50% or less success rates. Or implement a system and get 70%+ effectiveness.
Your next hire will show which path you picked.
