No board would approve a major acquisition based solely on dashboards and automated recommendations. Yet many organisations are increasingly comfortable allowing hiring decisions—the most enduring investments they make—to be driven by speed metrics, screening tools and compressed timelines.
Over the past two decades leading talent and hiring functions, I have seen recruitment shift from a leadership-led decision to a process optimised for velocity. Time-to-hire is now a primary performance indicator. Automation dominates early evaluation. Urgency is frequently mistaken for effectiveness. While efficiency has improved, the unintended costs of this shift are becoming visible in leadership fragility, cultural misalignment and avoidable attrition.
The pattern is familiar. A business leader pushes to close a role quickly to meet quarterly targets. Interview rounds are shortened. A candidate who appears “right on paper” is hired. Within months, concerns surface around ownership, adaptability or values alignment. These outcomes are rarely about technical competence. They reflect insufficient judgment exercised at the point of decision.
Technology has undoubtedly improved consistency and scale in hiring. But when automated filters become gatekeepers rather than tools, organisations start selecting for familiarity instead of potential. Strong candidates with non-linear careers are filtered out for lacking specific keywords—only to succeed in senior roles elsewhere. Speed is delivered. Judgment is not.
This matters because judgment cannot be standardised or automated. It is built through experience and context—understanding why someone made certain career choices, how they responded to setbacks, and how they operate under ambiguity. When leaders disengage from hiring and rely entirely on systems and timelines, accountability for future capability quietly shifts away from leadership.
There is also a behavioural distortion. Under pressure to move fast, interviewers prioritise confidence over depth and immediacy over learning agility. Safer profiles feel less risky than those who challenge prevailing assumptions. Over time, organisations build teams that execute well in stable conditions but struggle during disruption—precisely when leadership quality is most tested.
The cost of these decisions is not abstract. According to a widely cited estimate by the US Department of Labor, a bad hire can cost an organisation roughly 30% of the employee’s first-year earnings, excluding the broader impact on team morale, productivity and leadership credibility. Senior roles amplify this cost exponentially, yet are often filled under the greatest time pressure.
Some leaders choose differently. In one organisation I worked with, a CEO paused a senior hire despite sustained internal pressure to close quickly. Additional conversations revealed misalignment that would likely have emerged only after appointment. The role stayed open longer, but the eventual hire built a resilient, high-performing team that scaled sustainably. The outcome was shaped by judgment, not speed.
Candidates read hiring processes as signals of governance and leadership maturity. Senior talent, in particular, interprets rushed, transactional experiences as indicators of weak decision-making and short-term thinking. In the attempt to move faster, organisations often lose the very leaders they want to attract.
Hiring is not an operational transaction. It is a leadership decision with long-term consequences. Every appointment shapes culture, capability and an organisation’s ability to adapt to change. The cost of a wrong hire—lost momentum, disengagement and attrition—far outweighs the benefits of shaving weeks off a hiring cycle.
Speed will always exert pressure in competitive markets. But speed without judgment introduces strategic risk. The strongest organisations are not those that hire the fastest, but those whose leaders remain accountable for who they bring into the business—and why.
Vineet Goel
Talent Acquisition Leader
