A bad hire is rarely just a bad hire. It is a rippling event that quietly drains momentum from the team around them: missed deadlines, rework, tense one-to-ones, and a manager whose attention is pulled away from customers and strategy.
Research consistently puts the average cost of a mis-hire at between 30% and 200% of the role's annual salary - and that only captures the numbers finance can see. It doesn't measure the projects that stalled, the good people who quietly disengaged, or the customers whose experience slipped while the team recovered.
At Telentra, we believe the antidote is a hiring process that is intentional at every stage. That means defining the outcomes the role must deliver before writing a job description, calibrating on the two or three capabilities that truly separate strong performers from average ones, and running interviews that stress-test real work - not memorised talking points.
It also means being honest about culture. A candidate can be brilliant on paper and still be wrong for your business. The best consultants push back - respectfully - when a shortlist optimises for résumé over reality.
Get these fundamentals right and hiring stops being a gamble. It becomes a repeatable engine that compounds: every great hire raises the bar and makes the next one easier to attract, evaluate and retain.
