Why Your Last Bad Hire Wasn't a Hiring Problem

When a hire does not work out, most leaders review the hire. They reread the resume, second-guess the interview, and wonder what they missed in the references. The more useful review is of the process that produced it.

I learned that after nearly a decade in executive search. Before I ever coached a team through a hiring decision, I watched hundreds of them get made. The teams that hired well were not the fastest, and they were not the most thorough. They were the ones who understood how they were making the decision, and why.

A bad hire is usually the visible cost of a decision pattern that was already running underneath. Hiring just brings it into the open, because the seat is empty, the clock is running, and everyone can see how the team behaves when it has to commit.

The length of your process is a conflict style, not a virtue

How long a team takes to hire is rarely about candidate quality. It is about how the team handles a decision that involves other people. In the language of the Thomas-Kilmann model, that comes down to conflict style, and two styles show up most in hiring.

A search that stretches for months is often a team in collaborating mode. Everyone weighs in, every stakeholder gets a say, and the team wants alignment before it commits. That instinct is valuable when a hire needs broad ownership across the organization to succeed.

A search that closes in a week is often a team in competing mode. Someone with conviction drives the call and carries the room. That instinct is valuable when speed matters and the accountability for the outcome is clear.

Neither style is wrong. Collaborating is not the same as thoroughness, and competing is not the same as recklessness. Each one fits a different kind of decision. The trouble starts when a team runs one style on autopilot and applies it to every hire, regardless of what the hire actually calls for.

What this looks like in practice

A team that collaborates by default runs every search through the same long process. Six rounds, a case study, a committee, weeks of debate. Strong candidates take other offers while the team keeps gathering input. When the seat truly needed a fast, clear call, the default cost the team the person it wanted. The team calls this thoroughness. What it often is, is a group that will not let one person own the choice.

A team that competes by default fills the seat before it asks what the seat requires. A leader meets someone impressive, feels the relief of a problem about to be solved, and closes in a week. Nobody names what the role has to deliver over the next two years, or where this person has not yet been tested. When the hire needed real buy-in from the people who would have to work with them, the speed skipped the step that would have made the hire stick.

Same root, opposite symptoms. In both cases the style chose the team. The team did not choose the style.

The questions that actually diagnose it

1. Which style is running this decision? Name it before you open the search. Are you gathering input toward alignment, or handing one person the call? Both are legitimate. Autopilot is the risk, not either mode.

2. Does this decision need speed or buy-in? A hire that will only work if the whole team is behind it needs collaborating. A hire where one leader owns the outcome and the market is moving needs competing. Match the style to the decision, not to the team's habit.

3. Are we choosing the style, or defaulting to it? If the answer is defaulting, that pattern does not stay in hiring. It runs your budget calls, your strategy calls, and the people decisions you have been carrying since last quarter.

Choose the style, and the hiring follows

The next time a hire does not land, resist the urge to relitigate the candidate. Look at how the decision got made, and which conflict style was driving it. A team that knows whether it needs speed or buy-in, and chooses its style on purpose, will hire well at almost any pace. A team that runs the same default every time will keep producing hires that fit its process rather than its problem, and keep calling it bad luck.

Hiring is not a separate skill your team either has or lacks. It is your conflict style, made visible under a deadline.

Allison Williams is an executive coach and leadership advisor who works with leaders navigating complexity, transition, and high-stakes decisions. Subscribe to her biweekly newsletter at allisonkristinawilliams.kit.com.