The cost is not the salary
Replacement cost is the visible part: re-advertising, re-screening, re-interviewing, and the months the requisition sits open a second time. The invisible part is larger — the delivery that slipped, the team that absorbed the gap, and the manager time spent managing a mismatch instead of a team.
Because the invisible part never lands in a single budget line, it is rarely counted. It is still paid.
Bad hires come from thin evidence, not bad intentions
Most hiring decisions rest on a résumé, two conversations and a reference. None of those show the work. They show how well a candidate describes the work, which is a different skill and one that correlates weakly with performance for most roles.
When the evidence is thin, the decision defaults to instinct — and instinct is where inconsistency and bias enter.
Coverage is the lever nobody pulls
Teams shrink the funnel because interviewing is expensive in human hours. Shortlisting on a résumé before anyone has performed anything is the single largest source of missed hires.
When interviewing costs close to nothing per candidate, the threshold can drop to zero and every applicant gets a real interview. Coverage stops being a budget question.
What changes with a rehearsal
Give every candidate the same role scene on video, score the performance against the approved job description, and attach the clip to every score. The shortlist stops being an opinion and becomes something a hiring manager can replay, challenge and defend.
