Why the most important part of your next hiring decision might happen before you ever meet a candidate.
I’ve got a guy.
Four little words that have probably launched thousands of hiring decisions in small businesses.
Someone in your network knows someone. They’ve got great experience, an impressive resume and a glowing recommendation. Maybe you’ve even worked with them before.
And when you’re growing a business, stretched thin and desperate for someone capable to take things off your plate, that introduction can feel like a gift from the universe.
But here’s something I say to founders all the time.
“I’ve got a guy” is not a recruitment strategy.
I say that with love, because referrals can be incredibly valuable. Some of the best people you’ll ever hire might come through your network.
But knowing someone is wonderful at what they do isn’t the same as knowing they’re the right person for what your business needs.
And sometimes, we don’t discover that difference until we’ve made a very expensive mistake.
The Hire That Was Supposed to Make Everything Easier
I was working with a founder recently. Let’s call her Angela.
Her business was growing quickly, and she had an important project underway that would contribute significantly to its future growth.
She needed someone who could take ownership of the work, lead a small team and collaborate with the other leaders and technical experts in the business.
Most importantly, she needed someone who could connect the project to the bigger strategic picture so she could step away from the day-to-day decisions and focus on leading the business.
And Angela thought she’d found exactly that person.
The candidate came highly recommended through her network. They had impressive credentials, significant professional experience and seemed like a natural fit with the team.
She was excited. Relieved, even.
Except a few weeks into the role, things weren’t going as expected.
Now, this wasn’t someone sitting around doing nothing.
They were working hard. They were engaged. People liked them.
But important deliverables weren’t being completed, and the project was moving in a direction that wasn’t aligned with the broader business strategy.
One of the biggest concerns was a critical project roadmap that was only about half complete.
And while the new leader was focused on the activities and tasks involved, they weren’t demonstrating the strategic thinking needed to connect that work to the outcomes the business was trying to achieve.
They also weren’t effectively incorporating important input from the technical team.
Angela found herself increasingly involved in the project, making decisions and providing direction she’d expected this new leader to own.
The person she’d hired to create capacity was actually creating more work for her.
And she was understandably frustrated.
How could someone with such an impressive background, who came so highly recommended, be struggling this much?
That’s when we started asking a different question.
Had Angela hired the wrong person, or had she hired for the wrong role?
The Difference Between Experience and Capability
Here’s where I think a lot of growing businesses get themselves into trouble.
We start thinking about hiring when we’re overwhelmed.
There are too many decisions coming our way. Too many projects requiring attention. Too many people looking to us for answers.
And we think, I just need someone to take some of this off my plate.
Which might be absolutely true.
But being overwhelmed doesn’t necessarily mean we’re clear about what kind of help our business actually needs.
There’s a difference between asking, “What work do I want to hand over?” and asking, “What does my business need to be able to accomplish that it can’t effectively do right now?”
One is about relieving immediate pressure.
The other is about building the capabilities your business needs to grow.
In Angela’s situation, she’d hired someone with significant professional expertise. But what the business actually required was someone who could think strategically, understand enough of the technical considerations to make informed decisions, collaborate with other leaders and guide a team toward a specific business outcome.
Those weren’t nice-to-have qualities.
They were essential to succeeding in the role.
And while this person had an impressive resume, those capabilities weren’t as developed as Angela had assumed.
That’s an important distinction.
Someone can have ten years of experience in their profession without having ten years of experience thinking strategically.
They can be exceptional at delivering their own work without having the leadership skills required to guide other people.
They can be a wonderful colleague without being equipped to lead a critical part of your business.
None of that makes them a bad professional.
It means we need to be much more intentional about understanding what someone can actually do, not just what their resume tells us they’ve done.
And that work starts long before the interview.
When the Hire Doesn’t Work Out
Once Angela and I understood the gaps, we worked together to develop a clear performance and development plan.
We identified what needed to change, what successful performance would look like and how she could support this person in working toward those expectations.
We also prepared for the difficult conversation she needed to have.
Because here’s something I believe very strongly.
Everyone deserves the opportunity to understand where they’re not meeting expectations.
If someone doesn’t know there’s a problem, how can we reasonably expect them to improve?
Angela wanted to give this person a genuine opportunity to succeed. She respected their experience and cared about treating them fairly.
Over the following weeks, she provided feedback, monitored progress and acknowledged improvements where she saw them.
But despite that effort, it became clear that the essential leadership and strategic capabilities weren’t developing to the level the role required.
Eventually, Angela made the difficult decision to part ways.
And I want to be clear that this wasn’t a snap decision.
She’d taken time to understand the issues, provided meaningful feedback and support, and given the person a reasonable opportunity to improve.
She also handled the separation with dignity and respect.
Because your culture isn’t just what you say you believe.
It’s what people experience when things get difficult.
Your team notices how you treat people when they’re struggling. They notice whether you give honest feedback, whether you provide opportunities to improve and how you handle the decisions nobody particularly wants to make.
Angela understood that the way she handled this situation would communicate something important about her leadership and the values of her business.
And that mattered to her.
What We Did Before Hiring Again
Here’s the part of Angela’s story that I think is most valuable.
After the new leader left, we didn’t immediately start looking for a replacement.
We went back and examined the role itself.
We looked at the assumptions Angela had made about what the business needed, the responsibilities that hadn’t been clearly defined and the capabilities that hadn’t received enough attention during the original recruitment process.
We clarified what this person would be accountable for, which decisions they needed to own and how they would work with the other leaders and technical experts.
We made strategic thinking, leadership and sound judgment explicit requirements rather than assuming they’d come automatically with professional experience.
And we strengthened the recruitment process to help us understand how candidates actually think, make decisions and lead.
Because asking someone whether they’re strategic isn’t particularly useful.
I’m fairly confident most candidates are going to say yes.
But asking them to walk you through a complex decision, explain how they balanced competing priorities or describe how they connected their team’s work to broader business goals?
Now we’re learning something.
We also strengthened the onboarding process so the next person would have the context, relationships and clarity they needed to succeed.
What had initially felt like a disappointing hiring mistake became an opportunity to build a much stronger foundation for the business.
And that’s something I want more founders to recognize.
A hiring decision that doesn’t work out can be expensive, disruptive and emotionally difficult.
But it can also teach you something incredibly valuable about what your business actually needs, if you’re willing to look beyond the individual and examine the role, the expectations and the decisions that brought you there.
Before You Make Your Next Hire
If you’re thinking about bringing someone new into your business, particularly into a leadership role, I want you to consider three questions.
What does my business actually need this person to accomplish?
Not just which tasks you want to delegate, but what outcomes the business needs and what success should look like six months or a year from now.
What capabilities will someone need to deliver those outcomes?
Think beyond qualifications and experience. Consider judgment, strategic thinking, leadership, decision-making and the relationships they’ll need to manage.
How will I know whether a candidate actually has those capabilities?
Because a great resume, a glowing recommendation and a really good feeling about someone can all be part of your decision.
But they shouldn’t be the whole decision.
You aren’t simply hiring someone to fill a vacancy.
You’re making an investment in what your business needs to become.
And sometimes the most important hiring work happens before you ever post the job.
Because your people strategy is your growth strategy.
Want to Explore This Further?
In this week’s podcast episode, I share more about Angela’s experience, the hiring assumptions that created the problem and how to build a recruitment process that evaluates the capabilities your business actually needs.
🎧 Listen to Episode 19
Thinking About Making an Important Hire?
If you’re preparing for a leadership hire, or you’re questioning whether an existing role is working the way your business needs it to, we can work through that together in a Deep Dive Strategy Session.
In two focused hours, we’ll examine the role, clarify the capabilities and outcomes your business needs, and develop a practical plan you can put into action.