The 4 Hires Almost Every Growing Business Owner Gets Wrong

Hiring is the single most expensive decision an owner makes regularly.

A wrong hire on £40,000 doesn't cost you £40,000. It costs you that, plus recruitment, plus onboarding, plus the time of the people training them, plus the work that didn't get done, plus the morale damage, plus the months of "we'll give them another chance" before you finally let them go.

Real cost of a bad mid-level hire: usually £60,000 to £120,000.

Most owners between £200K and £5M will make at least one of the four hires below in the next 18 months. Each of these is a different kind of mistake, with a different reason, and they're worth knowing before you make them.

1. The "we need someone to take this off me" hire

You're drowning. You hire someone to take a chunk of work off you. You hire them fast, because the pain is high. You don't fully define what they're doing. You assume you'll figure it out together.

You don't.

They do an okay job at parts of it. They don't do the rest. You end up doing both your job and theirs, plus managing them, plus the work of the things they're not catching. You're more drowned than you were before, and now you have a salary to pay for it.

Why this happens: the hire is driven by your pain, not by a clear job. Pain hires lead to vague roles. Vague roles lead to bad performance, regardless of who you put in them.

The fix: before posting the job, write down the five specific things this person must own, what success looks like in 90 days, and what decisions they're allowed to make without you. If you can't write that, you're not ready to hire.

2. The "they were great in the interview" hire

They were charming. Confident. They had good answers. They asked good questions. They felt like a culture fit. Everyone in the room liked them.

Two months in, you realise they're charming but not very good at the actual work.

Interview ability and job ability are different skills. Some people have both. Many have only one. Owners who hire on interview presence (without testing the actual work) are basically betting on personality, not capability.

Why this happens: interviews are easier than work simulations, so most owners do interviews. The decision rolls forward on chemistry instead of evidence.

The fix: put a real version of the work in front of every candidate before you hire them. A short paid task. A real scenario. A piece of work product. Someone who's good at the job will do it well. Someone who's only good at interviews won't.

3. The "we need a senior person" hire

The business is growing. The owner thinks: we need someone senior. A head of operations. A commercial director. Someone "above" the team.

So they hire at £80K, £100K, sometimes more, with grand titles and grand expectations.

Six months in, the senior person is frustrated because the business doesn't have the systems for them to operate at the level they're used to. The owner is frustrated because they're paying senior money and still doing senior work themselves. The team is confused about who they report to.

Why this happens: owners assume seniority brings systems with it. It doesn't. Senior hires need systems to plug into. If the business doesn't have them, the senior hire spends 80% of their time building basic infrastructure instead of leading.

The fix: build the systems first, then hire into them. Or hire a strong mid-level operator who can build the systems with you, then hire senior on top of that. Buying a senior person to fix a structural problem usually fails.

4. The "this person needs a job and they're a friend / family / loyal" hire

Someone you know needs work. They're a good person. You trust them. There's something they could do at the business. So you bring them in.

This is the hardest one to talk about, because it's almost always done with good intentions.

The problem: the relationship and the role get tangled. If they underperform, you can't have the conversation, because it's also a personal conversation. If they leave, it's both a vacancy and a relationship issue. If they stay and don't grow, the business carries them quietly for years.

Why this happens: the hire is driven by loyalty or sympathy, not by what the business actually needs. Sometimes it works. Often it doesn't. And when it doesn't, the cost is double: financial and personal.

The fix: if you're going to hire someone close to you, the role has to be defined exactly the same way it would be for any external hire. Same job description. Same KPIs. Same reviews. Same standards. If you can't hold them to the same standards as everyone else, don't hire them. Hiring with two sets of rules damages the team and the relationship at the same time.

What good hiring looks like instead

Owners who hire well do four things owners who hire badly skip.

1. They define the role on paper before they advertise it. Five specific outcomes. Three KPIs. A 90-day success picture.
2. They use a paid task or work simulation, not just interviews. They want to see the work, not just hear about it.
3. They take their time. Hiring slow and firing fast is a cliche because it works. Most bad hires were rushed.
4. They onboard properly. A real 90-day plan for the new hire, with weekly check-ins. Most owners hire someone, give them a laptop, and hope for the best. That hope-based onboarding is why so many decent hires underperform.

This is not complicated. It's just not what most owners do, because the hiring process feels urgent and the discipline gets cut.

What to do this week

If you've got a hire planned in the next 90 days, run it through these four questions before you do anything else.

1. Have I written down five specific outcomes this person owns?
2. Am I going to test the actual work, not just interview them?
3. Do I have the systems for this seniority of hire to land into, or am I trying to buy a fix?
4. If this person were a stranger, would I still hire them on the same terms?

If you can answer yes to all four, hire with confidence. If you can't answer yes to one, fix that before you post the job.

That fix is cheaper than the wrong hire.

A note on what we do

Hiring sits inside the Team & Leadership area of the Profit System. It's an area where owners frequently overestimate themselves until they've made one or two expensive hires they regret.

The work isn't more complicated than what's above. It's just rarely done in full, because hiring usually feels urgent. Slowing down by two weeks at the start usually saves six months at the end.

If you've got a hire on the horizon, this week is the time to slow down for the right reasons.