The salary you lose on a bad hire is the smallest cost. The real damage happens to your team.
The math everyone gets wrong
Companies obsess over the financial cost: salary, benefits, severance. Maybe $150K total for a senior role.
But that's not the real cost. Here's what actually hurts:
- 3 months of your best engineer mentoring someone who won't work out
- 6 months of team velocity lost to drama and poor collaboration
- 2 people who quit because they're tired of carrying dead weight
Add it up: You didn't lose $150K. You lost a year of progress and your two best people.
Why traditional recruiting fails
Percentage-based recruiters don't care if your hire works out. They care if they look good on paper.
Their 90-day guarantee? That's how long it takes for problems to surface. By day 91, they've cashed your $50K check and moved on.
The signs you ignored
Every bad hire sends signals during interviews. You just missed them:
- They talked about process more than outcomes
- They blamed their last team for every failure
- They couldn't explain their actual contribution to past projects
- They interviewed well but had no work samples to show
What actually works
Stop optimizing for interview performance. Start optimizing for job performance.
- Work samples over words. See their actual code, designs, or sales numbers.
- References that matter. Talk to people who reported to them, not just their bosses.
- 60-day guarantee minimum. Problems show up fast when someone actually starts working.
The 10K difference
We charge $10K flat because we're confident in our hires. No percentages. No games.
More importantly: We find people who can actually do the job, not just interview for it.