In this brief solo podcast, Bradley Hamner warns recruiters and hiring managers that moving too quickly in the hiring process can be extremely costly. He introduces the "smash a Rolex" metaphor to illustrate the financial loss of a $50,000 employee who quits within 90 days, equating the wasted investment to buying and breaking a luxury watch. Hamner shares three recent client stories where urgency led to skipped steps—no in‑person interview, no shadow day, insufficient reference checks—resulting in early turnover. He emphasizes that even when using a service like Autopilot Recruiting for sourcing, the hiring organization must still conduct thorough in‑person interviews, cultural‑fit assessments, and shadow days. Hamner advises slowing down just enough to ask better questions, evaluate cultural fit, and document the recruiting workflow as a checklist. While acknowledging that no process guarantees 100% success, he argues that a systematic, step‑by‑step approach dramatically improves hiring outcomes. The episode ends with a call to listeners to adopt a written recruiting system and to be mindful that speed, when it bypasses critical evaluation, kills hiring success.
Chapters
Hey everyone. Well, I got a really short one for you today, but a lot of my podcasts, while they hopefully, at least the ones on Fridays may be short, hopefully they're really good reminders for you. And a lot of times the ones that come on Fridays really have come from the discussions that I have. And if I tend to start having or hearing the same thing from several different people, I think, you know what, I actually just need to record a podcast about this and get this message out because it's coming from a lot of people. I recorded one talking about owner island and how you're not alone, and it can feel very isolating. Well, this one is called Speed Kills in Recruiting. Now, Autopilot Recruiting, uh, does an excellent job. Alex, all them, they know so much about recruiting. But there's one thing that has been popping up a lot lately with our members and people that we work with, and I want to share with you some of the things that they have shared things, big kind of learnings, so that you can learn those lessons without having to possibly go through the pain that they've gone through. And that is, 3 separate occasions in just the last week, someone shared with me, they said, "Bretlin, well, I smashed a Rolex." And if you're not familiar with that concept, it's whenever you hire, you know, did the math on it, $50,000 employee, they turn over after 90 days, you've probably invested somewhere between $12,000 and $15,000, we might as well have gone down to the jewelry store, bought a Rolex, and 90 days later smashed it. And that, like, image for people has, has been really helpful for them to say, oh my gosh, yeah, I would never do that. Obviously I would never do that. But yet we tend to sometimes do that. But in all three of these cases, that's not the lesson of the takeaway. The question, or the lesson, is Why did that happen? Why did they smash a Rolex? And the reason is they went too fast. They went too fast. They said, I got in a pinch, we, we had someone to leave, or in one case they promoted someone so they had a big gap and they just needed to fill the spot quickly. And they skipped steps. And so look, even if you work with Autopilot Recruiting, at the end of the day, they're still going to hand over to you. They do the hard part of this recruiting process, which is the sourcing and the initial vetting and the reviewing of the resumes and seeing that if they're a really strong candidate. But you have to be the one to still take that and do an in-person interview, recommend doing a shadow day with them, and to make sure that they're going to be the right fit. In one case, one of my clients I've worked with for a long time is exceptional. He just almost does not miss. And he said, we totally missed on this one. They absolutely had— we slowed down just a bit, just a bit. And I don't mean he didn't— it doesn't mean dragging it out days. He just said, hey, if we had to slow down just a little bit, we would have realized they were not going to work in our culture. He's got a fast-paced organization. Go, go, go. Every position in the organization is a revenue-producing position. Every chair produces revenue. And if they would have slowed down, they could have asked a few better questions, been a little bit more intentional. They would have saw that this was not the right fit. They could have continued on looking the pipeline and probably would have made the right choice. He said, I have had to learn this lesson yet again. And it's been a while since he's had, you know, a situation like that where it was an obvious miss. The other two scenarios where the business owner, they were somewhat in a desperate position. They needed to find someone and get someone in quickly. They knew it was something that was holding the business and the organization back. It was the right decision to make, It's just the speed they start. They skipped— they didn't do shadow days, so they did not get to see them other than in just— he said from his words, you know, we spent a handful of hours to make a decision that was pretty large, only to once again have that person leave about just a little over 90 days later. It's not right for them. It wasn't going to be right for the business owner. And so hopefully this is a somewhat gentle, but maybe not so gentle reminder, is that when it comes to recruiting, speed kills. It does not mean that you have to drag it out weeks and months, but don't skip steps. Don't skip steps. Check the references, have them come in, do a shadow day, put them in the position, spend some time with— go to breakfast with them, have lunch with them. You're making decision just in 90 days, the value of a Rolex in a lot of cases. It's worth it to just say, hey, is, is this the right person? Is this the right cultural fit for us? And sometimes that is only another— spend another additional hour, ask better questions, really evaluate the person. Am I trying to speed this up because we're in a desperate situation. And so take it from the 3 clients that just in the last week, week and a half had shared, yeah, I smashed a Rolex and I had to learn that lesson again. I can't skip steps. And almost to a person, they all said, I knew better. I knew better than to do it, and I did it anyway. And so I said, well, what is going to be in this? If that has been you— and by the way, this has been me, so I can really relate to this— the question I asked them was, what's going to be different this time? What's going to be different this time? Is it just a— just going to double down? And all of them said No, I'm going to make sure that we have our recruiting system on paper where we can actually see it, where we literally could check off, have we done this, have we done this, have we done this? And that's not going to get— that's not going to make it foolproof. It's not, it's not. I mean, it's not going to make— nobody's 100% by no stretch of imagination. I mean, you know, look at the Lakers, my goodness, coaches and even players, etc. So you're not going to be 100%. But it will give you a much better fighting chance. I hope that helped. Till next time, lead well.
