Everyone knows a bad hire is expensive. But with a finance role, the cost runs deeper than most people add up, because this is the person you trust with the numbers you run the company on.
Start with the obvious. You paid a salary, maybe a recruiter fee, and months of onboarding for someone who did not work out. That money is gone. But that is the small part.
The bigger cost is what a weak finance hire does while they are there. Reports come in late or wrong. Decisions get made on bad numbers. A problem that a strong controller would have caught in week one runs for months. By the time you realize the hire is not working, some damage is already done.
Then there is the time to unwind it. A bad finance hire is slow and painful to remove. You worry about the books, you worry about coverage, you delay because starting over feels exhausting. Meanwhile the seat is effectively empty even though someone is sitting in it.
And there is the toll on the team. Good people notice when someone is not pulling their weight, especially in a small finance group. They pick up the slack, they get frustrated, and sometimes they leave. Now one bad hire has cost you two people.
The lesson is not to be afraid of hiring. It is that the cost of getting it wrong is high enough that it is worth doing the search right the first time. Screening hard on the front end is cheap compared to unwinding a mistake on the back end.
If you want to get a finance hire right the first time, that is what I do. Call or text 262-893-1523 or email marc@mdmrecruitingllc.com.