The hunt for a key executive, a CEO or CFO, typically requires three to six months of effort. No board of directors or hiring manager wants to arrive at the end of such a grueling journey only to find that the entire effort has failed and has to be repeated. It’s emotionally debilitating and very costly.
But it’s far better than an even more costly alternative: hiring the wrong person.
Too often hiring managers are so fatigued at the end of the drawn-out interviewing and evaluation gantlet that they agree to hire a candidate without making absolutely certain that the person is authentically who he or she purports to be. Quick decisions at this stage can lead to organizational, financial and public relations debacles that can take years to live down.
If there is a skeleton lurking in the candidate’s closet, someone will eventually pay in a severe way for not unearthing it before hiring is complete and the individual is onboard collecting a high salary.
Of course, rigorous and comprehensive reference checking from all angles can help prevent such an occurrence. But the unmentionable truth is that reference checking in the first part of the 21st century is a highly problematical effort at best.
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Recruiting and Exposing Skeletons (PDF)
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