August 13, 2026
The hidden cost of a poor senior appointment.
A poor senior appointment costs far more than the fees and the salary paid.
When a senior appointment goes wrong, the cost is rarely confined to the recruitment fee, salary or the expense of starting again.
The real cost is what happens to the organisation in the meantime.
After more than 20 years working in executive search, I have seen how much depends on getting senior appointments right, particularly in charities and purpose-led organisations, where resources are constrained, and leadership has an unusually direct impact on people, culture and mission.
A poor appointment can become extraordinarily expensive.
There are the obvious costs: recruitment, onboarding, salary, benefits, legal advice and potentially a settlement or notice payment. Then comes the cost of recruiting again.
But those are often the smallest part of the bill.
The costs you cannot easily put on a spreadsheet.
A senior leader influences almost everything around them.
If they are the wrong person, decisions can be delayed. Good people can become frustrated and leave. Trustees can find themselves spending disproportionate amounts of time managing problems rather than governing strategically.
Fundraising relationships can suffer. Partnerships can weaken. Transformation programmes can stall. Organisational culture can deteriorate remarkably quickly.
And perhaps most damagingly, confidence can disappear.
Once a board begins to question its CEO, or a CEO loses confidence in a senior colleague, considerable energy is diverted towards managing the relationship. Difficult conversations are postponed. Problems become normalised. Everyone hopes things will improve.
Six months can easily become twelve.
Meanwhile, the organisation has lost something it can never recover: time.
It can damage culture, undermine confidence, delay decisions, weaken partnerships and fundraising, and drive talented people away.
Why poor appointments happen.
It is tempting to assume that unsuccessful appointments result from choosing the wrong or an incompetent candidate.
Often, they don’t.
Many unsuccessful senior hires are perfectly capable people appointed to the wrong organisation, at the wrong moment, or into a role whose real challenges were never properly defined.
That is why recruitment should begin long before the advertisement is written.
What does the organisation genuinely need from this appointment?
What needs to change?
What should success look like after 12, 24 and 36 months?
What sort of leadership will work with this board, this executive team and this culture?
And critically: are we recruiting for the organisation we have today, or the organisation we need to become?
Experience isn’t enough.
One of the biggest recruitment mistakes is being seduced by the CV.
A candidate has done the job before. They know the sector. They have impressive organisations on their résumé.
All useful.
But senior appointments depend on much more: judgement, values, emotional intelligence, resilience, curiosity and the ability to bring people with them.
Technical competence may get someone onto a shortlist. It does not guarantee successful leadership.
Recruitment is risk management.
Boards rightly scrutinise investments, contracts, safeguarding and financial risk.
Senior recruitment deserves the same attention.
The objective should never simply be to fill a vacancy. It should be to understand the organisation well enough to identify the leader most capable of helping it succeed.
Because the most expensive senior appointment is rarely the person with the highest salary.
It is the person you have to replace.
Contact Us
For an informal and confidential discussion about this article, or on any other subject, please contact our Founder & CEO, Philip Nelson, on 020 3590 9978 or via email at philip.nelson@thehiringdept.com.
Philip has over twenty years of experience in charity governance and executive search and currently serves as a Trustee of Coram Beanstalk and as the Policy Development Lead for Heritage & Tourism at The Green Party.
