by Dr John Sullivan - Professor and Head of HR Mgmt atSF State Univ.

The business impacts of bad hiring
1/3 of salary is way too low for critical jobs. A bad "hire" can cost you millions ifthey lose a great customer or make bad decisions. The Quaker CEO cost them 1.4 BILLION on the sale of Snapple alone. Now that's a bad hire! (Ask any sports teamwhat is the cost of a bad 1st round draft pick that leads the team to a losing seasonand then must be let go in a year or two!)

Below is one of the templates we use to assess these costs. I can't share our figuresbut most people underestimate the costs by a factor of 5-10 for key jobs.

Strategic functions
Strategic functions are those that:
Impact across all departments.
Effect product development and customer satisfaction.
Significantly impact profitability.
If your company has a turnover of 20% per year and all of your new hires are mediocre, it will only take 5 years for all of your entire work force to bemediocre.

The cost of a "bad hire" for a software engineer can exceed a million dollars, for aCEO it could be as much as $1.4 Billion (Ask Quaker Oats for example!).

Assumptions About Recruiting
If you don't recruit and select great people you won't have great employees. Andwithout great employees you won't have a great company Great ideas and products come from people not from equipment, buildings or capital.

No one purposely hires Mediocre applicants but weak recruitment efforts and lessthan stellar selection tools will result in the hiring of Mediocre employees.

Everyone hires some Mediocre employees but poor employment systems will resultin a higher proportion of "turkey" hires then a World Class one.

The business impacts of hiring mediocre people
When you hire mediocre people one or more of the following things may happen:
Increased Management Time and Effort
Mediocre employees require "high maintenance" and more management attention and worry.

Time spent on "problem" employees can't be spent on the best employees.

Mediocre hires for management and team leader positions have a multiplier effecton the productivity of others.

Training time and costs
Mediocre employees, because they lack competencies, must attend more remedial training.

The time Mediocre employees spend in training slows their "time to productivity". Customer satisfaction and error rates

Mediocre employees send a message to our customers we are getting weak or we don't care about them.

Errors by Mediocre employees lose us sales volume and occasionally customers.

Product development
Mediocre employees have fewer ideas and mediocre ideas that distract us from where we really need to be going.

Time To Market is dramatically impacted by the disruption caused by their mediocre ideas and questions and because they do not fit well into in a team of"winners."

Trying to humor them or not hurt their feelings when they don't understand what the rest of the team is trying to do wastes time and energy. We answer theirquestions and politely try to help them come up to speed, when this help wouldn'tbe necessary if they "got it".

Our competitive advantage
When we hire a mediocre employee that is one bad hire that our competitor can not now hire by "mistake."

A mediocre employee takes up a spot on the team that can't be taken by a superstar. These are called opportunity costs.

Mediocre employees send a message to our competitors we are getting weak. This might encourage them and improve their own confidence / image so that theybecome bolder in the product market.

Mediocre employees produce less per dollar of cost (salary). Since typically 60% ofall corporate budgets go to employee expenses that makes the inefficient use of these funds a major corporate weakness.

Hiring Mediocre CEO's and top managers can adversely impact our stock price and the willingness of others to partner / merge with (or invest in) us.

Other employees' productivity
Superstar employees often resent being on the same team with "losers."

Team productivity can suffer due to lost time helping the weaker bad hires .

Our image and P.R.
Mediocre employees send a message to our competitors we are getting weak.

Mediocre employees send a message to future recruits that we are not a selectiveemployer.

Mediocre employees send a message to our current employees we are headed down hill.

High turnover rates due to Mediocre hires sends a message to other recruiters andpotential applicants.

Fill-in time
Mediocre employees may have increased absenteeism and tardiness.

When Mediocre employees are in extra training someone must fill in for them.

During the "gap" between the termination of the bad employee and the hiring of anew one there must be fill in help.

Out of pocket costs
Ad costs for recruitment as a result of having to do a replacement hire.

Bad hires often cost the same in salary and benefits as great employees but theirReturn on Investment is much below that of a great employee. (For an excellent hire the revenue generated by a new hire exceed their salary by at least 5 times).

HR time and image
Increased termination, exit interview and firing costs as a result of Mediocre hires.

Increased disciplinary costs as a result of Mediocre hires.

Added recruitment time and interview time as a result of having to replace a Mediocre hire.

More paperwork, files and documentation as a result of having to replace a Mediocre hire.

Poor HR work is seldom more visible than when we complete a Mediocre hire. It loses the trust we have built up and the bad image often "spreads" beyondemployment to the rest of HR.

What we need to do, and be able to prove it, is to hire people:
With more competencies (that we need).
Who self-develop without the need for company training.
Who have more ideas that are implemented.
That have a lower error rate, number of discipline incidents and absenteeism rates.
That have a higher customer satisfaction, higher performance appraisal scores, bonus rates and promotion rates.
That require "Low maintenance" from managers.
That stay longer before quitting.
Who produce more return for every dollar of salary paid them

It's that simple: Mediocre employees cost us a bundle and great ones make us rich!

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Dr John Sullivan
Professor and Head of Human Resource Management at San Francisco StateUniversity (JohnS@sfsu.edu)

Numerous articles by Dr Sullivan can be found at http://go.ourworld.nu/gately/sullivan.htm
Articles exclusively on recruiting can be found at http://www.erexchange.com/ere3/search.asp?SearchID=ARTCL&USERID=429912132

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