The Staggering Cost of a Bad Engineering Hire
Posted October 26th, 2015
An amazing amount of research has been done to empirically evaluate the cost of a bad hire. Unfortunately, the only consistent conclusion that research has produced is that the cost is significant, and different in every situation. The simple fact is that it’s impossible to put an exact figure on it, but everyone agrees that the cost is staggering. To help you better understand the impact of a bad engineering hire, consider the major ways that it impacts your bottom line.
Lost Productivity
A bad hire might start out as a stellar performer, but more than likely their performance will decline quickly. That means up until the time they quit or are fired, they are doing less than you hired them to do. And as soon as they walk out the door, it creates a hole in your workforce that could compromise your ability to complete projects, secure clients, and continue workflows. Only once you hire someone new and get them fully up to speed will you be back to full strength. In the meantime, you’ve lost a lot of revenue.
Compromised Morale
Bad hires often affect their co-workers more than their superiors. Dealing with a difficult or incapable co-worker in the same office can make it harder for your team to complete their own tasks and ignite office dramas that drag everyone’s productivity down. Once the bad hire leaves, your remaining staff will likely have to pick up the slack themselves which lowers productivity and morale even further and contributes directly to additional turnover. One bad cog can cause your whole machine to break down.
Wasted Recruiting
Recruiting is a time and labor intensive process that often has attendant costs – flying candidates in for interviews, paying for relocation costs, working with headhunters, training, etc. If you make a hire that then quickly leaves your organization, all the resources you’ve spent to recruit them are wasted. Then you have to spend them all over again to recruit someone else. Plus, your HR staff has to divert their focus to hiring rather than other issues, which can have much broader implications.
The cost of a bad hire is compounded by how important engineers are to their organizations. It is difficult to replace a technical professional who plays an integral role in your competitive strategy. To avoid making this mistake in the future, consider working with a specialized staffing agency that can help you connect with better candidates and evaluate them more accurately. Contact Bayside Solutions to begin discussing your present and future engineering staffing needs.
