🔥 Hiring Touches Everything: Diagnose Hiring Failures to Fix the Business
TJ Kastning
Hiring isn’t an isolated function—it’s the ultimate stress test for your entire business. If hiring isn’t working, neither is your business. A bad hire isn’t just a bad hire; it’s a symptom of deeper problems.
Many companies misdiagnose their hiring struggles, blaming recruiters, a “lack of good candidates,” or even the candidates themselves for not working out. In reality, hiring problems are often symptoms of unclear strategy, weak management, or broken internal systems.
Let’s break it down—what do the symptoms look like, what’s the real cause, and how do you fix it?
🏗️ Symptom: You Struggle to Define the Role
🔍 What This Looks Like:
- The job description is a laundry list of tasks rather than a clear vision of what success looks like.
- Leadership keeps changing their mind about what they want in a candidate.
- New hires fail in the role, but no one can articulate exactly why.
🚨 Real Problem: Your business lacks clarity about what success in the role looks like.
✅ Fix It:
- Define what the role should accomplish in the first 90 days, six months, and one year.
- Instead of listing skills, define key outcomes the new hire should deliver.
- Align leadership before you start recruiting.
🏢 Symptom: Hiring Feels Like a Revolving Door
🔍 What This Looks Like:
- Employees leave after 6-12 months or sooner.
- You hire people who seem great in interviews but don’t work out in practice.
- Good employees feel burned out and disengaged.
🚨 Real Problem: You don’t have a clear culture or retention strategy.
✅ Fix It:
- Define and live by core values—not just words on a wall.
- Conduct regular check-ins with employees to prevent burnout.
- Look for patterns in why people leave—exit interviews are critical.
📈 Symptom: Hiring Process is Slow, and Candidates Drop Off
🔍 What This Looks Like:
- Ghosting—great candidates stop responding after an interview.
- Your hiring process takes weeks or months, and by the time you decide, the best candidates are gone.
- Internal decision-makers delay hiring because they’re unsure.
🚨 Real Problem: Slow decision-making and lack of urgency.
✅ Fix It:
- Speed up the hiring process—commit to a hiring timeline and stick to it.
- Assign clear decision-makers so hiring doesn’t get stuck in limbo.
- Improve communication with candidates at every stage so they stay engaged.
🏗️ Symptom: You Can’t Find “The Right Fit”
🔍 What This Looks Like:
- Every candidate feels a little off, but you can’t pinpoint why.
- You reject strong candidates for subjective reasons (e.g., “they don’t seem like a fit”).
- The hiring process drags on forever because no one is “perfect.”
🚨 Real Problem: Your company either hasn’t defined its hiring criteria well or is overvaluing cultural fit.
✅ Fix It:
- Clarify must-have skills vs. nice-to-have traits.
- Be cautious of bias—are you rejecting people who could actually do the job?
- Use structured interviews with scorecards to keep hiring objective.
⏳ Symptom: New Hires Struggle to Get Up to Speed
🔍 What This Looks Like:
- It takes too long for new hires to be productive.
- They ask the same questions over and over because training is inconsistent.
- Some hires quit quickly, saying the job wasn’t what they expected.
🚨 Real Problem: Poor onboarding and training.
✅ Fix It:
- Create a 30/60/90-day onboarding plan for new hires.
- Assign a mentor or buddy for the first few months.
- Train managers on how to set up new hires for success.
🔎 Symptom: Your Best Employees Are Doing Everything
🔍 What This Looks Like:
- Top performers are overloaded because new hires don’t work out.
- Key employees are covering multiple roles due to hiring failures.
- Team morale is dropping because work is unevenly distributed.
🚨 Real Problem: Poor role definition and lack of clear expectations.
✅ Fix It:
- Define standard operating objectives (SOOs) for each role.
- Identify which tasks can be delegated and structure hiring around that.
- Protect your top employees from burnout by balancing workloads.
📉 Symptom: Performance Issues Are Subjective and Fuzzy
🔍 What This Looks Like:
- Managers struggle to evaluate employees because performance isn’t clearly defined.
- Employees don’t know what success looks like in their role.
- Promotions and raises are based on who is liked rather than measurable impact.
🚨 Real Problem: No clear performance management system.
✅ Fix It:
- Establish measurable KPIs for every role.
- Implement structured performance reviews with objective criteria.
- Train managers to give direct feedback tied to performance metrics.
🚧 Symptom: New Hires Seem Great but Fail Quickly
🔍 What This Looks Like:
- A new hire looked perfect on paper but isn’t delivering results.
- Managers blame hiring mistakes on bad candidates rather than internal issues.
- There’s no clear reason why people aren’t working out.
🚨 Real Problem: Either the role wasn’t defined properly, or training was too weak for them to succeed.
✅ Fix It:
- Audit past hiring failures to see where things went wrong.
- Improve interview questions to assess skills more accurately.
- Set clear expectations and provide better on-the-job training.
🔄 Hiring Failures are Business Problems in Disguise
If hiring isn’t working, it’s not just a hiring problem—it’s a business problem.
📍 Companies often blame the wrong things:
❌ “We just can’t find good people.” (Are your expectations or processes the real issue?)
❌ “No one wants to work anymore.” (Or are you not offering what great employees actually want?)
❌ “They just weren’t the right fit.” (Did you define what a “good fit” actually means?)
When hiring struggles happen, diagnose the real issue.
🚀 Let’s Fix This—Get Hiring Right by Fixing the Business
If your hiring isn’t working, we can help you trace the root cause and fix the gaps in your hiring strategy. We don’t just place people—we diagnose and solve hiring challenges so your company can attract, hire, and retain the right people.
📅 Book an Exploratory Call and let’s get your hiring process working for you, not against you.
The right people are out there—you just need the right strategy to bring them in. 🔥
