In this testimonial, the Managing Director of Your Client Matters, a finance‑industry marketing firm, recounts four‑plus years of using the Performia recruitment platform. He explains the high cost and risk of hiring a sales manager for a small business, describing past bad hires that cost $10‑15k per month in salary plus recruitment fees and caused operational damage. He details his recent hiring process through Performia, including interviewing three to four candidates, using the system’s colour‑coded suitability indicators (green, orange), and conducting thorough reference checks. One candidate, initially promising, was flagged by Performia’s checks as “unemployable” due to severe past misconduct. When the candidate was rejected, he responded with abusive emails and calls. The director emphasizes that paying a modest recruitment fee to avoid a costly bad hire saved his company significant money, time, stress, and potential damage. He frames the Performia service as an insurance policy for small businesses, recommending it to other owners seeking to protect their teams and bottom line.
Chapters
Managing Director of Your Client Matters. We're a marketing company for the finance industry, and I've been using the Performia system for about 4 years, 4 and a half years. And I've shared a story earlier I recommend you go and have a look at about a really successful hiring experience. I've also experienced the value of not hiring the right person as well, and I wanted to share this story. At the time, I was looking for a sales manager. And my experience was more of a value of why not to recruit as opposed to looking for the right person. I've tried recruiting sales managers in the past and typically they're looking for high salaries. They're looking for $100,000 plus commissions and I'm a small business and I'm prepared to pay good money if I get the right person. But my experience has been I've hired managers that not only can't manage, can't sell and can't train a team. So, I've wasted a lot of money. So, normally you might pay, you know, $15,000 to $20,000 under a normal recruitment process, and then you put someone on at $10,000 to $15,000 a month on salary. For most businesses, it takes at least 3 months for people to learn the business and learn what to do, and that's a really huge expense. And then you've got obviously the probationary period. And typically we had 3 months probation. We've now extended ours to 6 months, but even within 3 months— You need someone at that sort of salary level to be paying for themselves. So, I've actually made a few recruitment mistakes, and when I was using Performia for this time to recruit a salesperson, there were some people that were presented, but none of them had that green light. There were some people in the orange light. That means they're possibly suitable, and— but we need to do more digging. We need to do some reference checking, and we have to look at their output through their previous roles. So, I interviewed probably 3 or 4 people. I liked them. One of my faults in recruiting is I just fall in love with everyone and want them to start straight away. So, I have to remove myself now because I hate saying no to people as well. But after I met them and I said, yes, really, really like this particular person, after the reference checking— and we had some concerns about the personality and the volatility of bad feedback and communication if things weren't working out— and what actually happened was we were in negotiations, Performia continued with reference checking and some other things, It turned out that he was pretty much unemployable. He'd done so much damage to the previous companies that he'd worked at that it was quite clear that he's not going to be suitable, or if it was to work out when he leaves, it's going to create more damage than putting him on. So we gently let him down and said, you're no longer suitable. And I tell you what, I've never seen true enough colours come out through that process. We got abused. Abusive emails and phone calls because you know the system that we used is da da da. I can't repeat what he said, but that just shows that by using Performia for a small recruitment fee that didn't result in an outcome is a lot cheaper than actually of putting someone on and learning that later after you spent thirty or forty or fifty thousand dollars. 3 to 5 months later, I was happy that I had that recruitment process resource because without that I could have done a lot of damage to my business. So the process works, and if you don't actually find someone that's suitable or that has that green light, be okay that that's okay. They're actually saving you a lot of— not only a lot of money, but a lot of time and energy and stress. from putting on the wrong people. We've all put on, you know, I'm sure we've all had bad recruits in our life as a business owner, but this is more of an insurance as well. And if it doesn't work, be happy that you've paid the money to save you from putting on the wrong person. So, I wish you all the best with your business and good luck with your recruiting. I can highly recommend Performia. Thank you.
