She Couldn’t Hire the Talent Her Business Needed. So She Bought the Company That Had It
Hiring asks you to evaluate a story. An acquisition lets you examine financials, contracts, clients, and real performance.
EXPERT OPINION BY CHRISTINE SLOCUMB, ENTREPRENEUR AND ADVISOR
Heather Whaling, founder of the Columbus, Ohio-based communications firm Geben Communication. Photo: Courtesy Subject
As an entrepreneurial leader, you probably have at least one role you can’t fill. Maybe it requires a technical skill nobody in your network has. For me, it was business development, where the role’s success depended on relationships and institutional knowledge that took years to build.
In a traditional hiring process, you post the job, conduct the interviews, check the references, and hope and pray they work out. Then, six months in, you see whether the gamble was right.
A bad hire is expensive
A bad hire is expensive. There’s the time spent sourcing and interviewing, the ramp-up and training period, recruiting fees, and the cost of starting the search over if the fit isn’t there. For senior or highly specialized roles, that cycle costs significant time and money with nothing to show for it. Then there’s the opportunity cost of missing the person you didn’t hire.
There’s a less obvious alternative to this dilemma: instead of hiring the person, acquire a company that’s strong in the skills you need.
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Traditional hiring is risky
The core problem with hiring is having to vet candidates quickly. You only have a few hours with a candidate during an interview. Candidates present their strongest work and smooth over their failures. Even strong reference checks only tell you what a couple of people are willing to share. And most people won’t throw a person under the bus.
Heather Whaling, founder of the Columbus, Ohio-based communications
Heather Whaling, founder of the Columbus, Ohio-based communications firm Geben Communication, puts it plainly: “You hope that when you go through the interview process, you’re asking all the right questions and sussing out did they actually do that work, or did somebody else do it on their team.”
Unless you can bring on the hire as an independent consultant or intern to test them, it’s the gamble you have to take.
Source: www.inc.com
