The Hidden Costs of a Bad Hire (and How Staffing Agencies Help Avoid Them)

If you’re desperate to fill an open position, it could be easier to overlook red flags and ignore things that might otherwise be deal breakers. And the cost of a bad hire might be steeper than you’d first think.

At DeLong Staffing Specialists, we know what’s at stake and how to turn this situation around. Here we’ll get into the range of costs that companies could face if hiring needs have employers signing on anyone but those just-right job seekers. We’ll share some things to look out for and ways to prevent a bad hire from happening in the first place.

The Reasons Behind a Bad Hire

As we already mentioned, there are some situations in which an immediate hire is a necessity. If your current team is overwhelmed with work and you’re chronically understaffed, it can feel like an emergency–you need more qualified candidates now! That urgency and the inevitable rush to find people to fill the gaps in your workforce could lead you or your HR staff to rush the interview process, overlook red flags, and ignore gut instincts. You could reason that it’s better to have someone in the position than to keep stressing your current staff. But the painful truth is that it could end up costing you in more ways than one if you decide to hire the wrong person.

The Everyday, Practical Cost of a Bad Hire

Every new hire demands resources–recruitment and training costs, salary, benefits, relocation expenses, sign-on bonuses and more. Resources are also often pulled away from other projects to get the new employee up to speed. Employers could end up investing thousands by the time this is all said and done, and if things don’t work out, then beyond the lesson learned, that money is a total loss.

For larger businesses, this may not register as high on the scale of importance, but for smaller scale companies with tight margins, this sort of expense will go straight to the bottom line–the situation could be catastrophic. Beyond the financial strain, there can also be a time drain on management who are tasked with training the bad hire and team members who had to pick up the slack when things didn’t work out. Then of course there’s the cost of the next recruitment campaign to try and find the right person for the job. 

Key Hidden Costs of a Bad Hire

The monetary impact is to be expected, but there are some hidden costs of a bad hire worth knowing about.

• Customer impact: performance and productivity can both take a hit during times of transition, and when staff is overburdened it could lead to missed deadlines, errors, or poor communication and other direct, negative impacts on client relationships that could cause them to look elsewhere
• Employee culture and morale: a bad hire can also cost you by infecting staff with a negative attitude that leads to a domino effect of disengaged, dissatisfied, overwhelmed or unsupported employees looking for a way out–this can ultimately wreck the good morale and company culture you worked so hard to build
• Reputational costs: if bad hires are frequent and are impacting your company’s turnover rates, you could end up with a less-than-ideal reputation among job candidates or in the market overall–word gets around and you could see less of an interest from your ideal candidates

When you are left dealing with a bad hire, you could end up paying with a decrease in momentum, innovation, reputation, and trust among workers and clients alike. It’s difficult to deal with understaffing, that’s true, but putting valuable resources into a bad hire is arguably worse still.

The Cost of Leaving a Position Vacant

While neither understaffing nor the cost of a bad hire is a burden that any company wants to bear, the cost of leaving a position open can also have a negative impact on a company’s bottom line. Some experts put the cost of an unfilled position at roughly $500 a day in lost productivity. The numbers may vary for any given business, but any loss is going to deliver a hit directly to profit and growth.

Beyond all the work that can’t get done when you’re understaffed, it’s also likely that existing staff is feeling the pressure and overwhelm. This can lead to burnout, absenteeism, and, ultimately, turnover. Any way you slice it, not getting the right applicant for your open position can cost you. But there’s no need to get bogged down or paralyzed in the what ifs–there is a better way to strike the perfect balance.

Avoid The Cost of Bad Hires–Partner with A Trusted Staffing Agency

When you’re searching for the ideal candidate to fill a key position in your organization, staffing agencies can help you to pinpoint, properly vet, and quickly place qualified candidates who fit your company’s culture and meet a position’s requirements. It takes time to build a balanced hiring process that can satisfy urgent needs with accuracy, every time. Most companies don’t have the bandwidth to do business while also running a full-time internal staffing agency–that’s where staffing companies like DeLong Staffing Specialists come into play.

Our skilled and experienced recruiters are trained on how to attract, select, and hire the right person for a job. They can work with employers to tailor a job description in order to attract the right job seekers. And they help job seekers to portray themselves in the best possible light, making the most of experience and acquired skills. When applicants and employers align, our staff can efficiently handle education, onboarding, legalities and paperwork–employers simply open the door to welcome in their new, ideal worker. Every candidate we recommend has been fully phone screened, formally interviewed face-to-face, and has undergone a background and reference check prior to client submission.

Whether you opt for a temp-to-hire, contract employee, or direct hire employee, you can trust that the professional recommendations you receive from the DeLong Staffing Specialists team will always be qualified and a good fit. Should anything go awry, we have your back. That said, with the amount of work that goes into finding and vetting each candidate and the expertise that informs our decisions, it’s unlikely that you’ll be dissatisfied.

We spend time with our clients to get to know each one’s needs and preferences. Our goal is always to provide quality service and excellent staffing options. We pride ourselves on having a close working relationship with our clients, and account executives personally handle every customer request.

Your Staffing Agency In Cleveland

A bad hire isn't just a bad decision—it’s a way to quickly drain finances, productivity, morale, and valuable employees. Working with an employment agency can save capital, minimize disruption, prevent customer upset, and keep team morale and workflow where it needs to be to fuel growth and success. Leave the hardest work to us, with flexible staffing options that can serve every business need.

Now is the time to focus on growth, not to indecisively stall or jump feet first into a bad situation. It’s time to invest in your team and your business by working with a staffing agency like DeLong Staffing Specialists. We’ll help you to make strategic hiring decisions by streamlining the process and removing the friction.

We have decades of experience placing candidates in the industrial, manufacturing, customer service/call center, accounting/finance, information technology, office/clerical, and administrative markets, and work with candidates at all skill levels. Whether you need one reliable administrative assistant or a full crew, we’re here to help. Contact us today to get started.