46% of new hires fail within 18 months.
That's not a statistic. That's a choice.
Every failed hire represents a decision to skip the hard work of defining what success actually looks like. Every early departure is the predictable result of hiring against the wrong criteria.
What "Fail" Means
Let's be specific about what failure looks like:
- Voluntary departure (they quit)
- Involuntary departure (you let them go)
- Underperformance (they stay but shouldn't)
- Misalignment (wrong role, wrong team, wrong expectations)
All of these cost you. Time, money, momentum, team morale.
Why Nobody Measures Quality of Hire
Here's a paradox: Quality of Hire is the metric everyone wants and nobody measures.
Why? Because it's hard. It requires:
- Clear definition of success upfront
- Tracking performance over time
- Connecting hiring decisions to outcomes
- Honest assessment of what went wrong
It's easier to measure time-to-fill. So that's what we measure.
We measure process. We don't measure outcomes. And we wonder why outcomes don't improve.
Where Things Actually Go Wrong
The conventional assumption: hiring fails at screening. We picked the wrong person.
The reality: hiring fails at definition. We screened against the wrong profile.
Research shows that 80% of turnover reasons could have been identified before hiring — if we had asked the right people the right questions.
The Input Problem
When the input is a 500-word job description, what do you expect?
- You screen against the wrong criteria
- You interview on the wrong questions
- You assess against the wrong benchmark
- You hire the wrong person
- 18 months later: "It didn't work out"
The failure was baked in from the start.
The ROI Math
A single failed hire costs €50-100k+ when you account for:
- Recruitment costs (advertising, agency fees, time)
- Onboarding and training
- Salary during underperformance period
- Opportunity cost of the position
- Team disruption and morale
- Severance and re-hiring
Now multiply by your annual hiring volume. That's what the 46% failure rate actually costs.
3 Hours of Work vs. 12 Months of Problems
What if you invested 3 hours at the start of each hire to get the inputs right?
| Without proper inputs | With proper inputs |
|---|---|
| 46% failure rate | ~15% failure rate |
| Screening against keywords | Screening against real needs |
| Surprises after 3 months | Alignment from day 1 |
| €50k+ per failed hire | €5k investment per hire |
That's 70× ROI on the input investment.
A Systematic Solution
TalentByTeam systematically collects the inputs that prevent failure:
- Hiring manager expectations (articulated, not assumed)
- Team member perspectives (what they actually need)
- Departing employee insights (what the role is really like)
- Conflict detection (misalignments surfaced before you hire)
The result: you hire against what the role actually needs, not what the JD says.
46% isn't inevitable. 15% is achievable. The difference is the quality of your inputs.