The hiring method that cuts exec turnover by 47%
March 10, 2026
Hey Everyone,
When a senior hire doesn't work out, the cost is steep. Replacing a failed C-suite hire can cost up to 213% of their annual salary, and that's before you count the lost momentum, the team disruption, and the months spent restarting the search.
The problem is how these hires get picked. Without a structured process, executive hiring is roughly a coin flip.
Korn Ferry's research across 87,000 CEOs found that 34% of new CEOs leave by year three. But when companies used rigorous assessments, that number dropped to under 18% – a 47% cut in turnover.
Today, we're walking you through a structured way to evaluate your next VP or C-suite hire, built from methods that have been tested across thousands of executive hires.
First, build the scorecard
Before you write a single interview question, build a role scorecard. A job description is usually a long list of responsibilities that could fit dozens of candidates.
A scorecard is different. It answers 3 questions:
- What does this person need to get done in the first 6-12 months?
- What behaviours or skills will make the difference?
- And what does "great" look like for each one?
Geoff Smart and Randy Street at ghSMART built their entire method around this idea and have used it across more than 23,000 executive assessments.
The scorecard becomes the shared standard for everyone involved in the hiring process. Without it, interviewers each look for different things and then argue about who "felt" like the right fit.
Get alignment on the scorecard from every stakeholder before the search starts. If your leadership team can't agree on what "great" looks like for this role, you're setting up whoever you hire to fail.
Then evaluate candidates against it
The scorecard tells you what to look for. The next step is how you test for it. No single method is good enough on its own, so stacking methods together is what raises your accuracy.
Here's what to combine, and what each method catches.
Structured interviews: Ask every candidate the same questions, scored against the same scorecard criteria. This alone roughly doubles your chances of picking the right person compared to a normal conversation-style interview.
Walk through the candidate's career and, for each role, ask what results they achieved, what went wrong, and how their manager would describe their work.
A work sample or simulation: Give the candidate a task that resembles real work in the role – a case discussion, a strategic problem, or a 90-day plan. A work sample shows how someone actually thinks through the problems they'll face, which is something even a great interview can't fully reveal.
A psychometric test: Tools like the Hogan assessment flag interpersonal risks and decision-making habits that interviews miss. They're most useful when you treat the results as a guide for onboarding support rather than a pass/fail decision.
Structured reference checks: Talk to at least five references (former managers, peers, and direct reports) and ask the same questions each time, matched to your scorecard criteria.
Thumbtack CEO Marco Zappacosta takes this further: he tells candidates he'll reach out to people across their career on his own, rather than asking for a curated list. Confident candidates welcome it.
Get started with this template
We made a role scorecard template you can fill in before your next senior hire.
Use it as a tool before you write the job description or brief a recruiter. If your stakeholders disagree on what belongs in the scorecard, that's the conversation you want to have before you start meeting candidates.
Go deeper
👉 ghSMART: Scorecards: They're Not Just for Hiring Anymore – how to build a role scorecard and use it from hiring through onboarding, with a real CDO example
👉 First Round Review: Assembling an Executive Leadership Team — Thumbtack's CEO Shares His Process – advice on reference checks, job descriptions, and separating skills from fit
👉 Google re:Work: Use Structured Interviewing – Google's guide to building structured interviews, with templates and rubrics
Coming up tomorrow
Tomorrow we'll walk through a quarterly process to free up 10% of your budget so you can reallocate it where it matters most.
That's it for today! Thanks for reading.
P.S. What's the one interview question that's actually told you something useful about a senior candidate? Hit reply and share it with us.