Contents · 6 sections+
Contents
- I.The Hire Is Everything
- II.Slow Hiring Isn't Careful. It's Just Expensive
- III.I Can Find You the Best Candidate in the Market. Culture Will Still Beat Them
- IV.Data Will Not Save You from a Bad Hiring Decision
- V.Every Exception You Let Slide Becomes Your Next Headache
- VI.So Why Does the VP Keep Leaving Before Year Two?
I've placed a few of them. Here's what I keep seeing.
Under 18 months. That's the average tenure for a VP Sales.
Everyone quotes it. Nobody wants to sit with what it actually means. I've spent 25 years on the phone with these people — before they take the job, during it, and usually when it's already going sideways. Here's what I've learned.
I.The Hire Is Everything
One wrong AE? Six months of pain. One wrong front-line leader? Twelve. Hire a cluster of wrong people at once and you're not dealing with a performance problem anymore — you're in a crisis.
What I see constantly: the new VP brings his people from his last company. Those people bring their habits. Nine months later someone finally traces the rot back to the original hire. By then the damage is done and the year is gone.
I've watched this happen more times than I'd like to admit. The companies that avoid it treat the first hire as the only decision that actually matters — because downstream, it is.
II.Slow Hiring Isn't Careful. It's Just Expensive
Here's the pattern I watch repeat itself every year. Headcount approved in Q1. Brief lands on my desk in Q2. Process drags through the summer. Someone finally starts in Q4. The year is over before they've done anything meaningful.
The fix isn't moving faster. It's moving earlier. The best clients I work with know who they want before the seat is open. We've already had the conversations. The shortlist exists.
That's what retained search actually is — preparation, not reaction. By the time you're posting the role, you're already behind.
III.I Can Find You the Best Candidate in the Market. Culture Will Still Beat Them
This is the one nobody wants to hear.
When I'm briefing a new mandate I ask one question that tells me almost everything: what does it actually feel like to work here? Not the employer brand version. The real one. What happens internally when a big deal falls apart? How does leadership behave under pressure?
The hiring managers who answer that clearly and honestly? The search goes well. The ones who pivot to office perks and away days? That's when I know we're going to have a problem six months after placement.
The best candidates I represent have multiple options. They're not just picking a role — they're picking an environment. The companies that keep losing top people to lower offers almost always have the worse culture story. Every time.
IV.Data Will Not Save You from a Bad Hiring Decision
Everyone has a People Analytics function now. Attrition metrics, 360 scores, OKR completion rates. I look at all of it. It's useful context.
It has never once told me whether someone is the right hire.
I've walked away from candidates with immaculate track records because something was off in the room. I've gone to bat for candidates who looked underqualified on paper because the substance was obviously there. A dashboard won't catch either of those things.
Use data to form hypotheses. Then go have the conversation. In that order.
V.Every Exception You Let Slide Becomes Your Next Headache
I see this quietly wreck team structures all the time.
A hiring manager stretches on comp because they don't want to lose the candidate. Now they owe the same justification to everyone at that level. They hand a VP title to someone who's really a Director because it was easier than saying no. Now the actual VPs have a problem with the org chart.
Small concessions. Loud consequences down the line.
The framework only means something if you hold it when it's uncomfortable. That's the entire point of having one.
VI.So Why Does the VP Keep Leaving Before Year Two?
Because by the time they've worked out what they walked into — the culture gaps, the structural mess left by earlier exceptions, the wrong people already in the building — it's too late to fix it from their seat.
Most of them don't fail. They land in the wrong place.
That's not a VP problem. That's a sourcing problem, a briefing problem, a process problem. All of it sits with the company. All of it was visible before the offer letter went out — if anyone was looking closely enough.
That's my job. And it's why it matters.