The desperation trap: How I stopped rushing the hiring process

Lately, I’ve spent a lot of time looking through resumes, and honestly, I’m exhausted.I’m bringing on two new members to my team while going through the hiring process for summer interns.My calendar is normally stacked, but the past few weeks? Forget about it.And that’s the way it should be.

If done correctly, expect the hiring process to take a long time.When you’re short-staffed and drowning in emails, the temptation to hire any warm body is huge.

But hiring out of desperation can be a surefire way to bring down even a top-performing team. But it doesn’t just cost morale, it costs actual money.A bad hire can actually be more expensive than no hire at all.

If you rush it, you aren’t solving a problem; you’re delaying a bigger one, and you’ll spend more time fixing their mistakes than you would have by leaving the seat empty.Following the suggestions I’m about to talk about made my process longer, sure.There were days when I wondered if I was being too picky.

But now that the onboarding is set to begin, I’m actually sleeping better. I’m confident with the decisions I made and excited about what they will bring to the team.That’s the goal, right?If you’re looking for official numbers, Gallup consistently reports that the cost of replacing an individual employee can range from one-half to two times the employee’s annual salary. The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) reports similar figures, suggesting that the cost of employee turnover can amount to 150% of that employee’s annual compensation.

For managerial roles, that number is significantly higher, at 200 to 250% of annual compensation.But if you actually run a business or manage a team, you know these numbers are just lines on a spreadsheet.The true cost runs much higher. Here are the opportunity costs you can’t easily measure on a P&L:It’s no secret that the labor market is erratic right now.

I’ve seen surveys saying 70% of employers dealt with ghostin...