Here is Rob’s next chapter!

Like me, you have probably been on the receiving end of great service at Chick-fil-A — the clean restaurants, the efficient drive-throughs, the pleasant "my pleasure." While the chicken tastes good, the real differentiator for CFA is its people. This company is intentional about who it hires.

The restaurants make new hires in a few days. But Chick-fil-A's corporate hiring process is much longer — running anywhere from two to six months, and sometimes involving as many as 15 interviews for a senior role. Turnover of their restaurant managers is 5% compared to the industry norm of 35%. Among hourly workers, the turnover rate is 60%, compared to the industry average of 100%[^1]. Such an intentional hiring process helps preserve a culture and customer experience that competitors struggle to imitate.

Consider CFA's success against how hiring usually goes. Leadership IQ, in a landmark study, tracked more than 5,000 hiring managers and the 20,000 people they hired, and found that 46% of new hires failed within eighteen months. Only 19% — barely one in five — achieved clear success[^2]. Further up the leadership chain, a former CEO of executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles reported that 40% of senior executives are pushed out, fail, or quit within eighteen months of being hired[^3].

The Leadership Challenge

A bad hire costs you far more than the wages spent. Studies suggest the true cost can reach one-and-a-half to two times a position's annual compensation once you add up recruiting, onboarding, lost productivity, and severance. But the deeper damage is often cultural. A wrong fit erodes team morale, saps the energy of the people who have to compensate, and may cause some to question your judgment. So why do capable leaders keep paying that price? In my experience, most hiring failures trace back to three mistakes.

Too much emphasis on talent. It is easy to focus mostly on a candidate's résumé — do they have the skills and experience necessary to fill the role? But talent is easiest to measure and the least likely contributor to bad hiring. In the Leadership IQ study, only about one in ten hiring failures were due to a lack of skill; the other nine came down to attitude and fit. If you're not careful, evaluating potential hires can simply be a beauty pageant, with candidates using AI and career coaches to make themselves look good.

Not enough emphasis on character. Character — a person's values, beliefs and core motivations — is what lives underneath the polished resume. And it drives how someone actually behaves once they are on the job. How do they respond to stress and adversity? What is their primary motivation — growth? mastery? recognition? security? How do they treat people? These are values questions, not skill questions, and they rarely surface unless you go looking on purpose.

Failing to consider team fit. Even when talent and character are both strong, one question remains: does this person belong on your team? The right person in the wrong environment underperforms, wears on good colleagues, and often leaves inside a year. Yet fit is the piece we are quickest to reduce to a gut feeling in a single conversation — or to skip altogether once the first two boxes are checked.

The Leadership Opportunity

The intentional leader slows the hiring process down on purpose. Remember this familiar saying: slow to hire, fast to fire. Be prepared to take whatever time is needed. A quality hire will make substantial contributions, reduce turnover, and protect the culture you have worked hard to build.

I like the way Chick-fil-A addresses the three mistakes above by screening against three C's — character, competence, and chemistry. Patrick Lencioni frames these similarly in The Ideal Team Player as humble, hungry, and smart. Whatever labels you use, the discipline is the same: get clear on what you are looking for before you start. Let's use the three C's:

Competence

I recently helped a CEO prepare to hire for a newly created Chief of Staff position. We followed a 5-step process I used for years when I was hiring, and one which the leaders I coach have used to recruit top performers who last:

1. Clarify the key success measurements for the role — what are the outcomes this position is expected to produce? Notice this is outcomes, not activities of the position.

2. Identify the experience and skills necessary to produce those outcomes.

3. Design questions to explore to what degree the candidate has that experience and skills.

4. Make as many questions as possible experiential. Ask them to walk you through a time they actually did the task or skill you are looking for. If they can't cite a real example, they likely haven't done it.

5. Ask every candidate the same questions. Consistency will help you stay objective and thorough.

One bonus move: probe for alignment between the job and the candidate's own passions and abilities[^4]. A person doing work that fits who they are will outrun a more talented person who doesn't love what they do.

Character

Competence gets you a performer; character determines whether you will want them in the building on a hard day. My favorite tool here comes from legendary Coach Mike Krzyzewski: Consider the key values you want in your team and then ask candidates values questions[^5]. If Pride in Work is a value you want to see, then instead of "Tell me about your greatest strength," ask, "What are you most proud of?" If Integrity is a value, you might ask them to tell you about a time they told the truth when it was hard.

You are not listening for the right answer. You are listening for what they treasure — because values, not skills, tell you how someone will behave when no one is watching. Again . . .

1. Identify the Values you want in your team.

2. Design questions around those values.

3. Ask experiential questions.

4. Ask the same questions of every candidate.

Chemistry

Test for fit. Have others on your team interview the candidate, and be intentional about the questions they ask so they line up with what you probed on competence and character. Different people catch different signals. When we hire well as a team, we tend to keep the people we hire; when I hire in isolation, I miss things.

Finally, do your best to "know" the candidate as much as you can before the actual hire — get behind the curtain of the beauty pageant. I compare this to dating before you ask someone to marry. You might invite them to consult on a project or two first. Evaluate how they handle negotiating terms of the job offer. As Greg McKeown writes in Essentialism, the objective is to allow both sides to see each other as honestly as possible. If the fit is just right, the candidate moves forward and may receive an offer. If you're not absolutely sure, then the answer on this candidate is probably "No." Take your time to find the candidate who is a resounding "Yes!"

The Autopilot Leader vs. The Intentional Leader

Notes

1. July 30, 2026. https://lrsuccess.com/how-to-crush-the-competition-like-chick-fil-a/

2. Mark Murphy, "Why New Hires Fail," Leadership IQ (three-year study of 5,247 hiring managers), leadershipiq.com; see also Murphy, Hiring for Attitude (McGraw-Hill, rev. ed. 2016)

3. L. Kevin Kelly, quoted in Brooke Masters, "Rise of a Headhunter," Financial Times, March 30, 2009. 

4. For more on this, see Chapter 9, How to Navigate Your Career.

5. Coach K had five key values for his teams: Trust, Communication, Care, Collective Responsibility, and Pride.