Building teams that outlast the hire
A placement is easy to measure and easy to fake. The number that matters is whether the person is still there, and still glad, a year later.
By GRW Talent
Most hiring is scored on the day the offer is signed. It is the wrong day to score it. The offer is a prediction, and a prediction is only worth the outcome it points at. The outcome we care about sits twelve months out: is this person still here, doing work they are good at, in a team that is better for having them.
Fit is a two-sided word
When a hire goes wrong, the story is usually told from one side. The candidate was not what they seemed, or the company was not what it said. Both are the same failure: someone stopped asking the honest questions because the process rewarded closing. Good recruitment slows down at exactly the moment everyone wants to speed up.
What we watch instead
We track the boring signals. Did the first ninety days match what both sides expected. Did the manager and the hire describe the role the same way after a month. When those drift apart, they drift early, and they are cheap to fix early. That is the work, and it does not photograph well, which is probably why so little of the industry does it.