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Mark Sigal was excited about a promising engineer he hired for his technology startup. But the employee eventually quit, and an exit interview revealed the underlying problem.
"He thought he was signing onto X, but we were giving him Y," says Sigal, 41, now co-founder and CEO of vSocial, a 5-year-old Tempe, Arizona, firm that helps companies manage video clips on their websites.
He's not the only entrepreneur whose hiring technique has resulted in costly mistakes. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that it costs at least $14,000 to replace one employee. "As an entrepreneur, every single hire is critical," says Stephen Fairley, CEO of The Rainmaker Institute, a business coaching firm.
