“You are going to regret the day you met me”

One Of My Most Expensive Mistakes

"You are going to regret the day you met me."

That is how a staff member I hired started a conversation with me. He was right.

It is budget season in your head right now. Maybe not on paper yet, but in your head. You are starting to think about what 2027 needs to look like. The programs you want to launch. The gaps you need to fill. And if you are honest, there is probably a hire in there somewhere that you have been wanting to make for a while.

Before you post that job description, read this.

I made my first full-time hire about a year into leading a brand new church plant in Arizona. We had come a long way fast. Turned the finances around, built a small but solid team, and things were finally moving. I needed pastoral leadership to take the next step and I felt ready to find it.

Looking back I was overconfident and went too fast. In the moment it felt slow and I felt wise. Did I mention overconfident?

The pastor I hired had a good recommendation. We had attended the same college a few years apart. We had some friends in common. After a quick weekend visit I made him an offer. He seemed to check every box.

Twenty-four months later he walked into my office and those words, those painful words, came out of his mouth.

He was right. What followed was one of the hardest seasons of my leadership life. Character issues that had been there all along, hiding in plain sight. I had not looked for them. I had not known how.

The painful part is that I should have known better.

Years earlier, one of my first bosses in ministry, Kent Julian, now a CSP speaker and leadership consultant at kentjulian.com, had handed me a hiring framework I never forgot. Three things to evaluate in every candidate. Three things that determine whether a hire will make you or break you.

Competency. Chemistry. Character.

I knew the framework. Ambition made me arrogant. I went fast and assumed the rest.

After that failure I had a choice. Give up on hiring or get better at it. I chose to get better. I went back to what Kent had taught me, wrote it into a system, talked to other leaders to round it out, and rebuilt my process from scratch.

Here is what the Three Cs mean. I hope they help you avoid my mistake.

Competency is whether they can do the job.

Here is the good news. Most of you will be strong at evaluating this one. The new hire is probably taking tasks directly off your plate. You know the work. You know what good looks like.

What helps most is getting crystal clear on the job description before the process starts. Nail down exactly what they will be doing. That clarity makes competency easy to assess and gives the candidate a fair shot at showing you they can deliver.

Do not skip this step and get it right, but do not place more importance on it than the next two. They matter more and most people get in trouble with those, not this one.

Chemistry is whether they fit the culture and team.

Not whether you like them at dinner (although don’t skip that). Whether they embody your values, work well with your existing team, and belong in your culture.

Here is how to test it properly. Design your process so that people who know you, work with you, and are good at reading people spend real time with the candidate without you in the room. Your presence clouds things. People are on their best behavior with the boss. Let your team see them unfiltered. And make it longer than you think it needs to be. The smaller your team, the more this matters. You cannot hide a bad fit on a small team. A talented person who does not belong will create friction that costs you more than their talent is worth.

Character is whether they are who they say they are.

This is the one that can eat up your time and energy if you miss it. This one can also tank your organization. You cannot train character into someone very easily. You can develop skills. You can improve competency. Character develops so slow that it feels like it is either there or it is not. And if it is not, nothing else will save you.

Here is one tip on how to dig into it.

When checking references, learn to ask questions that help people reveal what they would rather not reveal, because they care about the candidate and want to protect them. Here is a line of questioning I have found helpful: "I want to be the best leader I can be. Our team, and this candidate, deserve a boss that helps them really thrive. We all make mistakes, even me. How did the candidate’s previous boss handle a significant mistake the candidate made? In what ways did he support the candidate that helped or hurt? What did the candidate take away from the experience? What advice would you give me to help him or her thrive on our team?"

Here’s why this line of questioning has worked. It is honest because you really do want to be a good boss, it shifts some of the focus from the candidate to you, and it is revealing because it draws out the mistake and how the person handled it without putting the reference on the defensive. If you can get a former coworker or friend on the line rather than a former boss or HR department, they will be more candid.

Bonus tip: Do not skip the background check. It is well worth a few dollars on the front end. Seriously, don’t skip it.

The irony in all of this is that leaders spend the most time in the interview process on the thing that matters least and almost no time on the things that matter most. Competency gets all the headlines. Character and chemistry are the hardest to change and the most commonly overlooked.

Some time after my failure I put a staff member through my reworked process. In the middle of it she pulled me aside and asked if it was maybe a bit long and different from other jobs she had applied for. I smiled and told her it was both of those things and worth every extra minute. After she was onboard she changed her tune on her own. She told me the process made her feel valued before she ever started.

That is what a good process does. It protects the organization and it honors the person.

Rarely is anyone great at hiring the first time they do it on their own. But you can get better. And with a hire or two on the horizon, now is the time to build the process before you need it.

I am cheering for you.