In the early days of Carrington West, we hired for experience. If you had not done the job before, you didn’t get a look in. We were all hands to the pump and didn’t have the time to coach or train, so it felt sensible. It worked in some cases, sure, but what it actually gave us, more than once, was people who could do the job, but simply wouldn’t. Skills without drive are a slow puncture in any team. So we flipped the model: hire ambitious, driven people, the things you can’t teach, and train the job, the things you can. That is when our growth took off, and it’s the advice we now share with clients of our engineering recruitment services every week.
Getting it wrong is expensive. The REC’s Perfect Match report found that a bad hire at mid-manager level, on a £42,000 salary, can cost a business more than £132,000 once training, lost productivity and increased staff turnover are counted. Some 85 per cent of HR decision-makers admit their organisation has made one.
There are two more lessons from our own mistakes I would always share with anyone leading a team, not just those on a growth journey. First, resist inflated job titles. Our first non-sales hire was a finance administrator we informally called Head of Finance. When growth demanded someone more senior, that shortcut caused real upset. Hire for the specific role and build genuine career progression instead.
Second, hire before you need to. Waiting until a vacancy is urgent breeds desperation, weak culture fits and no bedding-in time. Recruiting three to six months ahead of need lets you select properly, and gives the new starter time to learn before the workload lands.
I do have one caveat: attitude is not everything. For the sectors we hire into, safety-critical and chartered roles demand proven technical competence, and no amount of enthusiasm substitutes for it. The point is that between two capable candidates, drive wins.
As technical recruiters working nationwide, we have watched these three mistakes hold back good teams. Avoiding them costs nothing but discipline.
Sources
REC, Perfect Match: Making the right hire and the cost of getting it wrong