Why Strategic Hiring Starts Before You Go to Market
A CEO’s guide to avoiding costly hiring mistakes
If you were buying a house, would you do all the legal work yourself?
Probably not. Even if you were a lawyer, you’d still get an expert involved. The risk is too high, the cost of getting it wrong too steep.
Yet many businesses take the opposite approach with hiring. Despite being one of the most expensive, high-impact decisions a leadership team makes, roles are often created under pressure and they “just hire”. Fast. Reactive. Often under pressure. Frequently without stepping back to ask whether the role itself is right.
The real cost of getting hiring wrong
In New Zealand, around one in seven new hires leaves during their probation period, meaning significant time, effort, and budget are spent with little to show for it. As costly as early exits are, the impact is often worse when the wrong hire stays. Poor alignment lingers, problems compound, and the cost becomes less visible but far more damaging.
A mis-hire drains leadership time, slows decision-making, erodes culture and performance, and ultimately delays growth.
This is why most hiring failures don’t start with the person. They start earlier, with the role, the context it sits in, and the decisions made before recruitment even begins.
Hire the wrong person, and it’s costly. Hire the wrong role, and it’s costly. Get both wrong and the damage compounds.
Pip Spyksma, CEO & Leadership Advisor, Sprout People
What leaders need to do to avoid costly hiring mistakes
Avoiding expensive hiring mistakes isn’t about slowing everything down, it’s about focusing attention in the right place before recruitment begins. Leaders who consistently hire well tend to do the following:
Treat hiring as a strategic decision, not an operational task, recognising that the cost and impact warrant senior-level thinking and involvement.
Validate the role before assessing candidates, ensuring it removes real pressure from the leadership team rather than adding complexity.
Design roles around future outcomes, not current pain, so accountability and expectations still make sense 12–24 months from now.
Clarify decision rights and ownership upfront, reducing the likelihood that leaders step back in as the bottleneck.
Pressure-test the role against the wider structure, checking how it fits today and how it will scale as the business grows.
Be willing to pause or redesign, recognising that sometimes the highest-value decision is not to hire yet.
When these steps are taken, recruitment becomes far more effective. Roles are clearer, expectations are aligned, and hires are set up to succeed within a structure that supports performance rather than undermining it.
A pause that pays off
Before you hire, pause.
The most effective hiring decisions don’t start with job ads or shortlists. They start with clarity on direction, on outcomes, and on how the role will genuinely move the business forward.
If you’re considering a critical hire, the most valuable step may be a strategic conversation before you go to market. Pressure-testing the role, the structure, and the outcomes upfront is often what separates an expensive mistake from a hire that accelerates growth.
If you’re weighing up a role and want a strategic perspective before committing, an early conversation can bring the clarity that changes the outcome. You can start that conversation here.
