When the Great Hire Isn't the Best One
The best resumes and interviews don't always result in organizational success
High-responsibility jobs are not always held by the precise person necessary to do the work the best. The error may not promptly be realized and corrected.
It’s a leadership decision about “fit” that Darren Hardy told a story about recently on his Facebook page.
He would know what he’s talking about as he’s been an advisor to CEOs, founders and industry builders for three decades, is the author of “The Compound Effect” and the former publisher at Success Magazine.
Hardy told the story of Starbucks’ past business struggles in China despite highly-accomplished leaders trying for almost a decade to grow the brand. The failing of that directive and mission put CEO Howard Schultz in danger with the board of directors.
Then, Starbucks hired Belinda Wong, who had been running marketing in Hong Kong. She as provided the authority and power to run the company in China. Wong turned it into the Starbucks’ second-largest market, behind the United States.
She was the person the company badly needed.
“Nine years of failure flipped by one hire,” Hardy said.
His post pointed to a conclusion that he argued for as being highly beneficial.
“Growth happens when the right person steps into the right seat,” Hardy wrote.
“Steve Jobs found Tim Cook, the supply chain expert he needed to grow Apple.
“Reed Hastings found Ted Sarandos, a video distribution expert to take Netflix global.
“Satya Nadella found Scott Guthrie, a top-flight engineer to turn around Microsoft Azure,” he listed.
Wong retired in early, 2025 yet not before completely changing a company’s financial positioning and success in the grandest of ways. Remember, Starbucks couldn’t solve the market and financial equation for nine years, despite highly-skilled leadership.
There is something that stands in the way of making a sounder decision about who is the strongest fit for a “seat” and has the higher probability of success. The truth is not all credible, competent, strong professionals are the “right” fit for a role.
“Founders tend to mistake impressive resumes as solutions to their problems,” says says Andrew Bahlmann, a mergers and acquisition specialist, as well as the founder at Deal Leaders International and the host at The M&A Exit Lab.
“I have seen many examples within M&A of how businesses have hired senior executives who had a very strong resume but ultimately could not be effective due to the fact that the company needed a completely different skill set.”
There is a smarter approach, he contends and it’s not always the obvious background and credentials.
“The right question is what problem does the business need to solve next,” Bahlmann says. “If leaders make hiring decisions based on reputation rather than the direction of their company's future stages of growth, then progress will stall due to the mismatched needs of the position and the candidate selected.”
There are variables often present that make success a lot more difficult.
“I have seen excellent executives fail in situations where they were simply the wrong person for that company cycle. They were not bad executives. Far from it,” says Luciano Castro, a business transformation leader and turnaround executive.
“But they came from companies with mature processes, strong teams, clear governance, good data and established routines. Then they walk into a business where half of that still has to be built. That is a very different job.”
This is a problematic, yet not unusual, misstep.
“Many boards skip this diagnosis or fit-to-need analysis,” Castro says. “They see the brand name in the CV and feel safe: Fortune 500, large company, senior titles. It gives comfort but comfort is not the same as the right fit. And I saw it too many times.”
The outcome should not be a surprise, although it often becomes one.
“That is how companies end up hiring very strong people into the wrong chair, at the wrong time, with the wrong mandate,” Castro explains.
“The company needed an operator-builder. It hired someone trained to manage a much more mature organization, that could eventually be the right leader 3-5 years later.”
Intangibles can matter too.
“I ran a 72-hour operational cutover once. When I built the team, I didn't go looking for the most decorated people available. I pulled people I had worked with before, people I knew could read a situation at 3 a.m. when something broke,” says Sidharth Ramsinghaney, Director of Corporate Strategy and Operations at Twilio.
“Credentials didn't save us when a critical system failed overnight. Chemistry did. And that's what I see most leadership teams miss. They stop at accomplishment because accomplishment is easy to defend in a board room.”
He points to a more challenging exchange.
“The harder conversation is naming what's actually broken,” says Ramsinghaney.
“I've been in rooms where that question got avoided for months because answering it honestly meant admitting that what they had been doing wasn't working.”
Ignorance can be costly and delay or prevent progress and stall breakthrough.
“Just because someone is intelligent does not mean they understand a specific market, culture or customer,” says Nikita Khandheria, the founder and CEO at ERIA, a luxury event planning, hospitality and experiential marketing company.
“Every time we have tried to become experts in everything ourselves, we have produced average work. Every time we have brought in someone whose career has been dedicated to that one discipline, the quality of the outcome has changed dramatically.”
She elaborated:
“We produce events across many different industries and cultures but we do not pretend to know everything ourselves. If we are planning an Indian wedding, we bring in specialists who have spent years immersed in those traditions,” Khandheria says.
“If a corporate client is launching a product in a technical industry, we work with people who understand that audience. Our role is to build the best team for the challenge instead of assuming one person can do it all.”
To her, there is a common problem that could be prevented.
“I think many founders make the mistake of hiring for versatility when they should be hiring for precision,” Khandheria says.
One professional is far more blunt in her evaluation of the problem.
“I’ve seen organizations select and protect incompetence at the corporate executive level because it was the CEOs’ or the COOs’ hire and they don’t want to have egg on their face,” says Beth Boyd, a fractional vice president, global organizational development and learning.
Learning to more accurately and reliably identify and hire the necessary person for a critical role and a professional who will get the company out of difficulty and drive progress and growth beyond expectations, can long remain a challenge.
“The best hiring decisions start with a true understanding of where a company is at the point of being stuck,” Bahlmann says.
“Prior to initiating any executive search, I recommend that founders identify the one single obstacle to growth. This focus will enable the search process to be far more productive,” he adds.
“I have seen companies generate substantial value prior to selling the company solely through placement of a single leader with the specific operational or commercial expertise that was missing.”
It is fit more than reputation and success, Bahlmann stresses.
“Companies rarely grow into great companies because they hire the most accomplished executive,” he argues. “Companies become great companies when they hire the executive who has skills and attributes that align with the challenges facing their organization.”
Look too, not for perceived perfection but grit and resilience.
“Once the board is clear on the real gaps, the profile becomes much easier to define,” Castro says. “If the business is messy, I would look for scar tissue.”
He elaborates to explain: “Has this person worked in companies where the data was not perfect? Has this person built teams instead of only inheriting them? Has this person improved cash, fixed margins, changed incentives, dealt with resistance and made decisions without waiting for perfect information?”
Castro explains his reasoning.
“That experience is very different from running a large, mature function in a company where the machine already works,” he says.
Growth is the expectation yet the environment may not yet make it likely.
“One situation I see a lot is a company that says it needs growth but the real issue is that it is not ready to grow,” Castro says.
“Sales are undisciplined, finance does not trust the numbers, operations cannot deliver consistently and nobody really owns the full P&L (Profit and Loss). If you hire a pure growth executive at that point, you may just grow the mess.”
He advocates for a foundation that will support the expected outcome.
“In that case, the better hire is someone who can stabilize the business first, build the operating base and only then, push growth. So my view is this: define the gaps first, define the mission second and define the leader profile only after that.”
Without it, there is looming risk and a stronger likelihood of failing the mission.
“When those three things match, a leader can change the trajectory of a company,” Castro says, adding that, “When they do not, even a very talented executive can look like the wrong hire.”
Ramsinghaney has come to the conclusion that the deficiency, not always the individual, that needs to become the focus. He tells a story of his son that has long resonated with him and taught him a valuable lesson.
“Kiaansh was three when his preschool class built the tallest tower in the room. I picked him up that afternoon and asked who built it. He pointed to his friends,” Ramsinghaney says.
“Mason puts the scary-high pieces on top. Emma makes it strong at the bottom. And I figure out which piece goes where. Three kids. One tower nobody expected.”
There was a takeaway that can be applied to organizations.
“I think about that a lot when I see companies searching for someone to fix something,” he admits. “My version for a leadership search is: start with what is actually broken. Not ‘we need someone stronger.’ Something more specific: ‘What is stuck, where and who has fixed exactly that kind of problem before.’
“Every time I've seen a search like that produce a real result, it started with someone being willing to say out loud what the problem actually was.”
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Every fix here front-loads the diagnosis, but Boyd's line at the end names the part that actually explains why bad fits survive. Correcting a hire means the person who made it has to admit the mistake in public, so the company protects the decision instead of the role and keeps absorbing the underperformance quietly, because that's cheaper politically than being right. Better fit-mapping before the search helps future hires. It does nothing for the wrong one already sitting in the chair, since removing them was never actually a diagnosis problem.