Every few years, the pattern repeats itself. A company decides it needs serious technology leadership. They recruit aggressively, pay a premium, and bring in someone impressive. Eighteen months later, that person is gone and the organization is back to square one, only now they are out thousands of dollars and further behind than when they started.

This isn’t bad luck. It’s a predictable outcome of a flawed process. And until organizations understand why these hires fail, they’ll keep making the same expensive mistakes.

Why I Know This Pattern So Well

For over thirty years, I’ve observed IT hiring from a unique vantage point. I had direct experience, in my previous business, as a co-owner of a managed service provider (MSP). Also, our largest client was a large international chemical company, and I regularly consulted with their senior IT directors on internal recruitment strategies. What struck me most was how consistently they chased the wrong qualifications. In one particular case, they were obsessing over technical certifications for a position, like the MCSE (early two thousand), yet the real job demanded organizational acumen, the ability to manage across a globally distributed team, and to navigate stakeholders who couldn’t always accommodate immediate requests.