Why Time-to-Hire Metrics Miss the Real Cost of F&B Leadership Gaps

Hiring the wrong leader is expensive, especially in F&B manufacturing. In some cases, the full cost can be north of twice that leader’s annual salary. On top of that, there’s the indirect costs that come from bad decisions, missed opportunities, and even employee churn.

When considering the true cost of a leadership gap, it’s important to look not only at the cost of keeping the position open—which is not negligible—but also that of rushing to fill a position too quickly. Although it’s important to have a low time-to-hire, focusing too heavily on that metric can cause you to miss other, sometimes hidden costs.

What’s the true cost of a bad executive hire?

The cost of hiring a bad F&B manufacturing executive can actually be higher than keeping a position open for longer than expected. The direct cost can easily land in the six-figure range, but the indirect costs can easily send that number into the millions.

So while, you’ll want to evaluate the cost of keeping a position open for too long, it’s also important to consider the direct, indirect, and opportunity costs of hiring the wrong leader.

Direct financial costs

There are a number of direct costs associated with a bad hire, some of which are more obvious than others:

• Paying salary and benefits for weeks, even months, before realizing that you made a mistake
• Severance and payout for any accrued but unused benefits (e.g. PTO or HSA contributions)
• Repeat recruiting, onboarding, and training costs

Indirect financial costs

In addition to the direct costs, hiring the wrong leader can also incur some indirect costs:

• Negative impact on business outcomes due to poor strategic and managerial decisions
• Lost productivity during the transition period, as individuals have to adapt to one leadership style and set of strategic directives, only to pivot again months later
• Potential employee churn as employees are dissatisfied with new leadership and seek employment elsewhere—especially in an industry that’s already facing employee retention challenges

Opportunity costs

A poor hiring decision can also result in opportunity costs. The wrong executive can not only lead your F&B manufacturing company down the wrong path, but those decisions often close the door on opportunities leading to future innovation and growth.

The drawbacks of focusing on time-to-hire metrics

Time-to-hire metrics encompass a range of specific KPIs that different companies define in different ways:

• Overall time-to-hire—total number of calendar days from when a candidate enters the pipeline until they accept the offer
• Time-to-fill—The duration from job requisition approval to an offer acceptance
• Time-to-start—number of days between job requisition approval and the candidate’s first day on board
• Stage-specific metrics—breaking down a candidate’s process through the pipeline stages (i.e. screening, first-round interviews, final interviews)
• Pipeline velocity—how quickly top-tier candidates are moving through the pipeline

Although there are nuances and differences among these KPIs, the one thing they have in common: they prioritize speed above all other metrics. So if you’re measuring your hiring process (or your agency’s) based on these metrics alone, you’re only looking at one side of the equation.

What do agencies & HR teams miss when focusing exclusively on time-to-hire?

When time-to-hire is the sole metric used to measure the effectiveness of a hiring process, it can lead to recruiters taking shortcuts. While they may technically end up filling a role faster, often these result in hiring the wrong person. Here’s why.

Lack of thorough candidate assessment

If you’re replacing someone on the factory floor, you can afford to move quickly and replace a worker if things don’t work out. Executive search, naturally, is a bit more involved of a process. Even so, you’d be surprised at how many hiring teams look at past titles and resumés as their sole or primary criteria for choosing a new leader.

This can happen for a number of reasons:

• Limited talent pool—and so they have to settle for what they have
• Emphasis on speed, which means they can’t wait for the right candidate to come along
• Lack of clarity around what exactly which differentiated traits are more likely to drive business outcomes
• Looking only at hard skills, not soft skills or cultural fit
• “Big logo syndrome” — assuming that just because someone worked at a big brand, they’re a good fit.

But let’s be real: vetting candidates takes time. It’s not something that happens overnight. So when you rush through the recruiting process, often the first thing to go is effective vetting. Which introduces the risk of bringing on the wrong leader.

The Alpha Difference: We’ve been building relationships among F&B manufacturing leaders for years. So by the time you come to us looking to place someone, chances are we either have someone in mind for the role or can find that person very quickly.

Not evaluating industry knowledge

F&B manufacturing is a niche industry that requires a certain level of inside knowledge that leaders need to be successful. It’s important for leaders to have their finger on the pulse of industry trends like AI, automation, and skills gaps, not to mention emerging food safety regulations, sustainability initiatives, evolving consumer preferences, and supply chain innovations—all of which play a major role in strategic decision-making.

When you hire too quickly, it’s hard to thoroughly evaluate whether a candidate has the deep expertise needed to take your manufacturing organization to the next level, or whether they’re just going through the motions.

The Alpha Difference: We live and breathe F&B manufacturing. So we can look beyond the resumé to see if the candidate in question actually understands this space.

Not assessing for cultural fit

Finally, skills and experience aren’t the only things that make a good leader effective. Cultural fit is key if you want leaders who adhere to your core values, can engage employees well, and contribute to the organization’s long-term success.

The Alpha Difference: We prioritize learning not only the tangible, but intangible, attributes that an employer is looking for so we can proactively look to match not only skills but also cultural fit.

How Alpha’s deep network delivers faster, better results

It may sound like hiring in F&B manufacturing means trading hiring speed for the quality of the placement. For most agencies, that could be the case. But at Alpha, we’re able to deliver the best of both worlds. We’ll not only find the right person to fill the leadership gap, but we’ll do it faster than anyone else.

That’s because we’re not just recruiters. We’re F&B experts with deep experience in the industry among both our leadership and front-line recruiters. We’ve spent years building a deep talent of F&B manufacturing executive talent—all of whom are pre-vetted and are open to considering their next challenge.

In F&B, it’s a mistake to fill a role as quickly as possible without considering other factors. So let Alpha find an executive who can fuel your next growth initiative and take your company to new heights.