A bad hire can cost a company a substantial share of that employee's annual salary once lost productivity, team disruption, and the cost of restarting the search are factored in. Few leaders act on this until they've lived through it.
The most costly part usually isn't paperwork — it's the ripple effect. A poor fit drags down team morale, forces managers to spend hours managing performance issues, and can push high performers toward the exit themselves.
They almost always trace back to a screening process that didn't dig deep enough — an impressive resume and one comfortable call, with nobody verifying communication skills or role-specific competence.
Requiring real, on-camera responses to role-specific questions before a final interview provides far more signal than a resume and a short call ever could, and multiple reviewers can catch red flags a single interviewer might miss.
A bad hire is expensive. A better screening process, by comparison, is cheap.