Missionaries versus mercenaries. The senior leader hiring framework. Why 40% of senior hires fail within 18 months.

The candidate I was going to hire was the best at interview. Then I watched them work with other people.

Their collaboration was awful.

Up to that point I had been choosing someone to join a team by listening to them talk about themselves. Which, when you write it down, is a strange way to go about it. It didn’t feel strange at the time.

You know the feeling. Someone credible sits opposite you, understands your problems, has done this before. Somewhere in the second half hour you stop examining them and start looking for reasons to say yes.

I fell into it, and I’d hired hundreds of people by then. Right now I’m working with a founder hiring a COO, and with another business where someone has to take over a CEO’s responsibilities after an acquisition. Both need someone who can do the job. Both also need to know whether that person wants to build this business, with these people, for years. A CV answers the first question. It says nothing about the second.

Most hiring processes don’t ask it.

Why do so many senior hires fail?

Heidrick & Struggles looked at 20,000 searches. In a 2009 Financial Times interview, its then chief executive Kevin Kelly said 40% of executives hired at senior level were pushed out, failed or quit within 18 months. PrimeGenesis reported the finding.

Four out of ten.

Some left, some were pushed. I don’t much care which. The job wasn’t right for them or they weren’t right for it, and either way you’re back where you started, a year older, with the decisions you thought you’d handed over back on your desk. The team watched it happen. They judged you for it.

Why does it keep happening to sensible people?

Because when you need a senior hire, the vacancy is all you can see. You want the operation sorted, the sales team led, the decisions made by someone other than you. Meet a person who looks capable of that and you stop looking.

But relief isn’t what you’re buying. A permanent senior appointment is a five-year bet. What do you want this person to build once this quarter’s problems are behind you?

And is that what they want?

Here’s the distinction I use. Missionaries join for the future. Mercenaries join for the money. Your hiring process is built to find out whether they can do the job. It doesn’t find out which of the two you’ve got.

Everyone cares about money, obviously. Pay them properly. But money is why people leave. It’s rarely why they stay.

Try the year-four test. The novelty has gone, the easy wins are done, the company still needs building, and it’s a wet Tuesday in February. What keeps them here? If the honest answer is the package or the exit, you’ve hired a mercenary. Fine, as long as you know it.

You can agree a salary without agreeing what you’re building.

What should your hiring process reveal?

All of that gets decided before you meet anyone.

I never start a search without a scorecard: what this person has to achieve, and how we’ll know they have. Write the scorecard first. Then use it to write the advert, brief the headhunters, or both. Do it the other way round and the first impressive candidate rewrites the job in their own image.

Before the first phone call I ask for a three-minute video: why us, why now, why you? Perhaps half never send it. It’s the same filter I use for salespeople. Someone who can’t be bothered to make a three-minute video has told you how much they want the job.

Then the Topgrading™ interview. Every job, in order, from the first one. It’s long, and it’s meant to be. I’ve had candidates withdraw partway through. Better then than in month nine.

And you check references, properly. I do these for clients and I go in looking for a no. The question I put to the former boss is this: what do I need to do to make this person a success in their first ninety days? A real referee answers it in detail, because they know. The other kind goes quiet, or tells me I’m wasting my time. Either way I have my answer.

All the way through, listen for the work they want more of. If they say they want to build a team, ask about the last one. What did they enjoy? What was hard? And why are they leaving? If a founder kept overruling them, talk about how decisions will work with you now, not in month three.

Then turn it round onto your business. The questions I keep coming back to:

• What do you want the next five years of your working life to be about?
• What interests you about our purpose and the customers we serve?
• Which part of our BHAG, our big hairy audacious goal, would you want to help achieve? What would you challenge?
• When has sticking to your values cost you something?
• Why does joining us make sense at this point in your career?

I’d far rather hear a candidate argue with part of the plan than hear our website read back to me.

Same with values. Once they’ve told you when theirs cost them something, tell them about a decision yours changed. That’s the honest version of your culture.

By now you should know why they want this job, not just a new one. But you still haven’t watched them work.

Can they build with the people already there?

Back to my favourite. I’d interviewed them three times and learned nothing that mattered. Then I watched them work for three hours.

People get promoted for what they know. At executive level they succeed or fail on whether they can get things done with colleagues who want different things. Sales has to work with finance. A COO has to decide with people who see a different part of the problem.

So before you make an offer, give your best three candidates a few hours, face to face, on a real project with several members of your executive team. Choose a difficult problem with no clean answer, the kind where they’ll have to debate, disagree, persuade and listen. Stay out of the room. Record it, and watch it back.

Don’t let it turn into another presentation.

Then watch what happens when someone challenges their idea. Do they listen hard enough to change their mind? Can they explain themselves well enough to change somebody else’s? Do they help the group get to a better answer, or do they try to win? If they’d rather win than be right, you’ve just watched your executive meetings for the next five years.

Watch them do the thing you’re hiring them to do.

Luke Tobin went further than that. When he came on the podcast he told me he asked senior candidates to take a week’s holiday from their current job and spend it inside his business. He paid them for it.

“We would pay people for a full week in the business,” he said. “Come and spend five days in the business and get a feel for it.”

Did anyone say no?

“We did. We did. I would say probably one in two, one in three would say that actually.”

My reply: “They weren’t really serious. They weren’t moving for the mission.”

I’ve been on the other side of this. When Peer 1 wanted me, I wanted to make a five-year bet on my career, and I wanted it to be the most lucrative five years of my life. So I went to Vancouver, and I wouldn’t let Fabio Banducci and Gary Sherlock hire me until I’d spent a week with them there. At the end of it I said: I’ll build the go-to-market plan for Peer 1 Europe. Either you offer me the job to execute it, or I leave you the plan and you pay me for the week. They paid me for the week. Then they offered me the job, and I launched Peer 1 in Europe.

You don’t have to run the week. You do have to ask, and mean it. The right ones say yes, because they want to know as much as you do.

And before the offer, have dinner. I caught a control freak at dinner once. Nothing in the interviews. Then, over a meal, the way he described tracking his children gave me the creeps.

Are you offering the right job?

Not every senior hire is a five-year bet. Sometimes you need a turnaround: someone to cut cost, stabilise the operation and hand it over. That’s a mercenary’s job, and a good mercenary does it better than any missionary would.

So hire one, on a contract. Agree at the start what has to change, what must be protected and what the handover looks like. When the work’s done the contract ends, and everybody got what they came for.

The mistake is keeping them. I coached a turnaround specialist who wanted to stay on and build. He had to unlearn the slash-and-burn instincts that made him good at turnarounds in the first place. That was the whole of the coaching.

You’ll still get some wrong. We do. You’ll know inside ninety days. Go back to the scorecard. Are they delivering, are they working with the team, or are you explaining away problems because you wanted this one to work? If it isn’t working, act. The team already knows.

Before your next search, write the scorecard. Then test what they can do, and why they’d want to do it here.

You know why you want them. Why should they want you?

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between a missionary and a mercenary hire?

A missionary is drawn to the purpose of the company, the people and what they can build together. A mercenary is primarily drawn to the assignment and its reward. Either can be the right hire. The mistake is giving a five-year building job to someone who wants an assignment with a finish.

How do you test whether a senior candidate can collaborate?

Give your best three candidates a few hours, face to face, working on a difficult problem with several members of your executive team. Keep the CEO out of the room and record the session. Then watch. Do they listen, persuade and help the group reach a better answer, or defend a prepared position?

Should you ever hire a mercenary?

Yes, when the work has a finish. A turnaround needs someone who wants to make the difficult cost decisions, stabilise the operation and hand it over. Put that assignment on a contract with the handover agreed at the start. The trouble starts when you expect the same person to want the years of building that follow.

How soon can you tell a senior hire has gone wrong?

In my experience, within ninety days. Go back to the scorecard you wrote before the search and check delivery and collaboration against it. If you catch yourself explaining away problems because you wanted the hire to work, act now. Another year rarely changes the answer.

What should you do next?

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A strong interview can hide a weak hire. You’ve seen what it costs when a permanent appointment ends inside eighteen months.

Write the scorecard first, ask for the video, run the collaboration exercise and check the references for a no. The offer you make after that is one you can still defend in year four.

That is the point. A senior hire isn’t relief from this quarter’s problems. It’s a five-year decision about who builds the business with you.

Four ways to take this further

1. Book a call. If a senior hire is holding up your growth, Dominic can help you decide whether the problem is the scorecard, the selection process, the person, or the job you’re actually offering. No obligation, no pitch. You will know quickly whether this is the right kind of help.
2. Grab the book. Mind Your F**king Business gives founder-CEOs a practical way to build a company that can scale without them in every room.
3. Get the A-Player Hiring Toolkit. Start here if you’re about to brief a headhunter or write a job advert. The job scorecard comes first.
4. Subscribe to the newsletter. One idea a week on hiring, culture and the other decisions that decide whether a scale-up gets past its founder.

Your move. Before you interview anyone, write down what this person has to achieve in year one and how you’ll know.