When a hire doesn't last, people almost always look in the same places: the interviews, the references, the probation period. Very rarely do they look where things actually started to go wrong — before a single candidate was contacted.
Every recruitment process measures the candidate. Very few measure the other half of the match: the team doing the hiring. That team arrives with its own patterns — how it communicates, what it rewards, which people it naturally warms to. And no one measures those.
A match has two sides. Measuring only one isn't thoroughness. It just gives you half a picture.
The unmeasured hiring team
Imagine two candidates with identical CVs meeting two different hiring teams. The chance of them ending up in the right role isn't 50/50 — it depends entirely on what the specific team is looking for, consciously and unconsciously. Teams hire in their own image. That's not malice; it's a pattern that activates without anyone deciding it.
ATTRACT measures the hiring team before the first candidate is contacted. What are the team's actual patterns? What's missing? Which blind spots should the interview questions compensate for? That's the foundation a good recruitment process is built on.
Performance vs. potential
A CV documents performance: what a person has done, in roles they've already held. It says nothing about potential — the ability to grow into a new context, master new relationships, deliver in a different team with a different manager.
That difference is what decides whether a hire holds on a three-year horizon. We screen for growth potential and patterns in communication and behaviour — not to replace the interviews, but to give them a far better foundation.
What does a bad hire actually cost?
Conservative estimates put the direct cost of a failed hire at 6–12 months' salary. And that only covers the visible items: recruitment costs, onboarding time, productivity loss, the time the team spends compensating. On top of that come cultural impact, management burden, and the potential knock-on effect on the rest of the team.