The Department of Labor says a bad hire costs 30% of first-year salary.

For a $200,000 executive, that's $60,000.

That number is wrong. It's way higher.

It doesn't count the team disruption. The momentum you lost. The client relationships that got damaged. The second search you now have to run.

Bad hires almost always trace back to three things: speed over diligence, skills over fit, or the wrong recruiter.

I've spent 30 years making the right hires, not the fast ones. The difference shows up three years later.