IBA, as the premier business brokerage firm in the Pacific Northwest, is firmly established as a respected professional service firm in the legal, accounting, banking, mergers & acquisitions, real estate, and financial planning communities.  Periodically, we will post guest blogs from professionals with knowledge to share for the good of owners of privately held companies & family owned businesses. The following blog article has been provided by Lacey Clark of NW Recruiting Partners (https://nwrecruitingpartners.com/):

Setting Your Company Up for Success in Replacing Executive Management Positions

Hiring Speed = Hiring Success

Why top candidates ghost, and the 10-business-day hiring plan that keeps you competitive.

A Monday morning call that didn’t go the way the owner expected

The owner sounded confident when we started. “We’re finally ready,” he said. “We just need a strong Controller. We’ve got great people, good culture, and a solid business. This should be straight forward.”

By Friday, he was calling again — not confident this time. He’d met a candidate on Tuesday who checked every box: strong technical accounting, calm under pressure, had cleaned up a messy close before, and didn’t flinch when he described the workload. The candidate left the interview smiling. The owner told his team, “I think this is our person.”

Then… nothing happened. Not because they didn’t want her, but because everyone was busy. The ops leader was traveling. The CFO advisor couldn’t meet until the following week. Someone wanted “just one more interview” to be safe. The compensation conversation was still fuzzy. They didn’t want to rush.

On Friday afternoon, the candidate emailed: she had accepted another offer. It came together in nine days from first call to offer. Their process had been going for twelve days… and they hadn’t scheduled round two yet.

The owner’s exact words were: “We lost her and we didn’t even do anything wrong.”

That’s the problem. In today’s hiring market, “not doing anything wrong” is not the same as doing enough to win.

Why slow hiring is expensive (even when it feels careful)

Most owners believe a longer hiring process protects them from bad hires. It feels responsible, thoughtful, and thorough.

But in real life, long processes mostly create four outcomes:

• First, you lose the best candidates. The people you actually want are typically employed, performing well, and fielding more than one option. They do not wait around for weeks while a company decides whether it is serious.
• Second, you invite counteroffers. The longer you take, the more time you give a current employer to step in with a raise, a promotion, or a “we can’t lose you” speech that works far more often than owners want to believe.
• Third, you burn out your current team. The role stays open, the work spreads to everyone else, and eventually your A-players start quietly wondering why they’re the ones carrying it.
• Fourth, you create revenue drag. Open roles in sales, operations, finance, and leadership don’t just create inconvenience. They slow decisions, delay projects, and show up in the numbers.

One of the most common things I hear from owners is, “We can’t move faster because we’re busy.” The honest answer is: you’re busy because you don’t have the right people. That’s why you’re hiring.

A second story: the candidate didn’t ghost — the process did

A smaller professional services firm (around 60 employees) was hiring a senior ops leader. Great role, strong culture, and a real chance to make an impact. The owner was excited and moved quickly at first.

The first interview happened fast. The candidate was engaged and responsive. The second interview got delayed because two internal stakeholders couldn’t make the original time. Then it got delayed again because the owner wanted to “circle back after month-end.” By the time they finally got round two scheduled, the candidate had gone quiet.

A week later, she replied with a polite version of what many candidates feel but rarely say: “I’m moving forward with another company that seems more aligned and organized.”

Candidates don’t just evaluate the role. They evaluate the experience of being led by your team. A slow process signals friction. An efficient process signals competence.

The real reasons hiring slows down

When you look closely, most hiring delays come from a few predictable breakdowns:

• No clear decision-maker. When five people can veto and nobody can decide, the process grinds to a halt.
• Unclear definition of success. When the team can’t describe what great performance looks like in the first 90 days, interviews become opinion-based and inconsistent.
• Compensation uncertainty. Candidates can feel it when you haven’t agreed on range, bonus structure, or flexibility. They assume you’ll try to buy them cheap, or you’ll negotiate internally after you’ve already built their expectations.
• Too many interview steps. Additional rounds do not filter out bad candidates. They filter out strong candidates who have better options.
• Poor scheduling discipline. If interviews take two weeks to schedule, candidates assume you aren’t serious.

The fix we use: the 10-business-day hiring plan

After watching too many companies lose great candidates due to process drift, we started using a simple playbook. It isn’t flashy. It just works.

This timeline fits most key roles in privately held businesses: controllers, operations leaders, project managers, sales leaders, and mid-to-senior hires. Executive roles often take longer, but the same idea applies: momentum matters.

Day 0: the one-hour alignment that saves weeks

The best hiring processes start before you talk to candidates. We ask owners and hiring teams to align on five things:

• First, outcomes. Not tasks. Three to five outcomes the person must deliver in the first six months. Examples might include shortening the close, stabilizing job profitability, building repeatable pipeline, or improving on-time delivery.
• Second, must-haves versus nice-to-haves. Four to six must-haves max. If the list is longer, it’s usually a sign the role is unclear.
• Third, compensation range and the walk-away point. Decide the range and your flexibility before you interview. Candidates can sense uncertainty immediately, and it damages trust.
• Fourth, a lean interview panel. Decide who is involved and what each person is responsible for evaluating. More people is not better. Defined roles are better.
• Fifth, one decision-maker. Input is healthy. Committee hiring is where great candidates go to die.

Days 1–2: intake and outreach

We run a focused intake with the hiring lead and decision-maker, then launch outreach and targeted sourcing quickly. Great candidates are not sitting on job boards waiting to be discovered. The best ones are usually heads-down working and need to be approached thoughtfully.

Days 3–6: round one interviews that stay on purpose

Round one should be fast and focused — usually 30 minutes. The goal is simple: confirm must-haves, assess communication and judgment, and validate the career story. This is not the time for five interviews with five different people asking the candidate to “walk me through your resume.”

If you want consistency and speed, use a scorecard and keep round one tight.

Days 6–8: round two that drives a decision

Round two is a deeper interview with real stakeholders, usually 60–90 minutes.

This is where you evaluate how they think in your world. Work samples and scenario questions are ideal. A simple case-style prompt tells you far more than generic questions.

Examples:
“You inherit a margin issue that no one can clearly explain. Where do you start?”
“You walk in and the close is consistently late and messy. What happens in your first 30 days?”
“The team is resistant to process changes. What do you do in week one?”

Days 8–9: references and offer prep

References should be done while momentum is high, not two weeks later when everyone has forgotten what they liked about the candidate.

At the same time, prepare a clean offer. Confirm compensation details, start date target, and any contingencies. Decide who is delivering the offer verbally. Ideally, it’s the decision-maker, not a generic email from HR.

Day 10: offer and close

Strong candidates want clarity. They want to feel chosen, not “still under consideration.”

A verbal offer should reinforce three things:

• Why you selected them
• What success looks like
• What the first 30–60 days will include

A third story: moving fast doesn’t mean lowering the bar

One client (a growing services business) was skeptical about moving quickly because they had been burned before. “We’d rather take our time than hire the wrong person,” the owner told me.

We used the same timeline but added discipline: a tight scorecard, one structured scenario interview, and a same-day debrief after each interview round. They moved quickly, but they didn’t guess.

They made an offer on day ten. The candidate accepted the next day and later told the owner, “I chose you because the process felt clear and decisive. I knew what you needed, I knew what success looked like, and I wasn’t left hanging.”

Speed didn’t create the win. Clarity did. Speed simply made the clarity visible.

How to move fast without making hiring mistakes

A fast process only works when it’s structured.

If you want speed without regret, these guardrails matter:

• Use a scorecard instead of gut feel. Gut feel is fine as input. It’s terrible as a system.
• Ask proof questions, not opinion questions. Replace “Are you a strong leader?” with “Tell me about a time you inherited a struggling team. What did you do in the first 30 days, and what changed by day 90?”
• Limit interview rounds. Two rounds are enough for most roles. Add a third only when the role truly requires it.
• Debrief the same day. A 15-minute debrief right after interviews prevents the process from drifting and keeps feedback crisp.
• Communicate with top candidates every 48 hours. Candidates don’t need constant updates. They need predictable updates. Silence creates doubt.

Track the metric that matters: time-to-decision

Time-to-hire is helpful, but the real lever is time-to-decision.

Competitive targets look like this:

• Time-to-first interview: 3–5 business days
• Time-to-decision after final interview: 24–48 hours
• Offer turnaround: same day or next day

If you can’t hit those targets, your competitors will.

Closing thought

Hiring is a sales process: you’re selling the opportunity, the organization, and the way your leaders operate day to day. Speed communicates confidence and clarity; delays communicate uncertainty and hassle.

If you have questions relating to the content of this article or staffing for publicly traded or privately held companies, Lacey Clark would welcome the opportunity to answer them.  Ms. Clark can be reached at (425) 443-248 and laceyc@nwrecruitingpartners.com.

IBA, the Pacific Northwest’s premier business brokerage firm since 1975, is available as an information resource to the media, business brokerage, mergers & acquisitions, real estate, accounting, legal, and financial planning communities on subjects relevant to the purchase & sale of privately held companies and family-owned businesses.  IBA is recognized as one of the best business brokerage firms in the nation based on its long track record of successfully negotiating “win-win” business sale transactions in environments of full disclosure employing “best practices”.