His interview took 45 minutes. His firing took 11 months.
A manufacturing promoter needed a plant head urgently. He met the candidate over chai, liked him, and hired him inside 45 minutes.
Eleven months later, after missed targets, two safety lapses and a team that had quietly stopped trusting him, the promoter finally let him go. The exit took far longer than the hire. Notice period, handover, the search for a replacement, months of a plant running on a wound that never fully closed.
For the same role, the second time, he did it differently. Six rounds, not one. Two real reference checks, not the two names the candidate handed him. A short trial project before the offer, not after. It took five weeks longer to fill the seat.
That hire stayed seven years.
Most Indian founders run this exactly backwards. They hire fast, because the seat is urgent and the candidate seems fine and time is money. Then they fire slow, because letting someone go feels disloyal, and loyalty is a value we genuinely hold. Urgency drives the hire. Guilt delays the exit. It should be the other way round.
The data backs what this promoter learned the hard way. Nearly three in four employers admit they have hired the wrong person. Close to half of new hires fail within eighteen months, and the overwhelming majority of those failures come down to attitude and fit, not skill. CFOs report that supervisors lose over a quarter of their working week simply managing someone who is not working out, more than a day, every week, for as long as that person stays.
A rushed hiring process is not efficient. It is just moving the real cost from this week to some point next year, with interest.
If your interview process is shorter than the time it will take you to undo a bad decision, you already know what is coming.
For your last senior hire, how many rounds, how many real references, any trial?
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