The mistake that makes companies pay for the same hire twice

 

Businesses hire the wrong person for roughly two in five roles. According to the Recruitment & Employment Confederation, a poor hire at mid-manager level can cost an organisation more than £132,000. Most of that cost is invisible until it isn't: a slow start, a difficult exit, then the whole talent attraction process again.

The common mistake behind this isn't a flaw in the interview process. It's treating attraction as a marketing campaign bolted onto the front of the business, separate from the real brand, which is the lived experience of exits, development and everyday management. Candidates eventually meet that real brand. If it doesn't match the campaign, the mismatch shows up as attrition, and the organisation pays to hire the same role twice.

Employees, not campaigns, are the most persuasive recruiters, but only when what they say matches reality. A glossy campaign that oversells culture creates the same gap in reverse: it sets up an expectation the day-to-day then has to live up to. And review sites expose that gap publicly, before a candidate even applies, whether you're managing them or not.

None of this is really about better marketing. A working employer brand strategy is about closing the gap between what an organisation says about itself and what it's actually like to work there.

This is the anchor piece for LHH's latest talent attraction report. The full report is the "what do I do about it" piece, answering in full what this article can only gesture at. Download the full report here.