What is the most expensive employee you can hire?
It is a Category 3 employee. The trick is to spot them and eliminate them during the recruitment process. My best advice is to use an Assessment Matrix. Firstly, what is an expensive employee?
Risk and why someone is an expensive employee
Recruitment is all about minimising the risk of hiring the wrong person.
Essentially, there are four types of candidates:
- 1The unsuitables: easy to eliminate in the recruitment process; an entry level junior can do this for you.
- 2The maybes: they may have the right personality but lack experience. You could train them up, however, there is a higher risk associated with taking them on board.
- 3The look goods: resume and experience are of interest. Interview - fantastic. Testing and reference checks - fantastic. We hire them ... and we wish we had not
- 4Then there are the ones: look great and are brilliant in the job. They excel and they stay
The difficulty in recruiting is separating a category 3 from a category 4 because they both perform superbly in the interviews. They both look like High Achievers.
Category 3's are the expensive employees.
Their performance is not disastrous yet continuously unsatisfactory and regularly below par, however, not bad enough to warrant a termination. Therefore, they have a high opportunity cost. It is ongoing as they stay with the organisation for years. They are truly expensive employees because they continue to underperform.
How to avoid hiring expensive category 3 employees?
Next time you recruit, I recommend the use of an Assessment Matrix. The Assessment Matrix is the “recruitment blueprint”, and is simple to set up.
The selection criteria are listed on the left side, with the stages of the recruitment process heading the following columns. Selection criteria are used to assess the candidates’ suitability for your role.
Each candidate should address the selection criteria at least once during the process, however, it is better to have multiple, independent sets of verification - also known as double and triple checking. For example, if three independent observations (initial phone screening, interview, and reference checking) are obtained that all lead to the same conclusion, then the risk is minimised.
A candidate with two positive and one negative observation is not necessarily unsuitable, however, the risk is higher for that selection criteria. The philosophy is to minimise the risk for across all selection criteria through individual observations.
If using a recruitment agency, this is the least that should be expected. Ask the consultant to detail their process and the Assessment Matrix. If it can't be shown to you, you have the right to question if you are getting value for money.
Download an Assessment Matrix template for your personal use:
Managing Director
11 Recruitment
Great article. I would have to agree on 3 been the most expensive hire. They often “talk the talk“ but can’t can’t preform and become totally disengage. However if they hang around for years I would then say their superiors would be the most expensive hire for not addressing the issue.
Great article!. The matrix would be very useful as a multiple checking tool when recruiting.
In my experience many recruiters fail to address “organisational fit” within the key selection criteria, this is perhaps why we get more 3’s than 4’s.
Adding 3 or 4 criteria to identify candidate attitudes, beliefs and motivations I have found helps, along with an honest recount of the role expectations and organisational culture may save us from hiring the expensive employees.
Totally agree too many times you run checks have a great interview. Then you hire and they are world champions for the probation period. Then they go bad I like the idea of the triple check would be ideal to spend the time to get the right candidate for the job
Great article Christian. Spot on with the candidate types and a very good solution provided to find the ideal employee.
Glad to hear you liked it 🙂 I can only say it works really really well for us.