Plessner: Recruiting is a team sport
By Jan Plessner
This article originally appeared in the March issue of Powersports Business.
Having trouble finding good people? Are your recruiting efforts turning up lackluster results? How often have your hires looked perfect on paper, only to fall apart a few months later?
That exact scenario played out for us a couple of months ago. We located and submitted a strong candidate. Interviews went well. References checked out. The offer was competitive and accepted. The start date arrived, and things looked promising…until the wheels fell off.
The success or failure of a search isn’t determined solely by the recruiting professional’s capabilities. It is heavily influenced by the hiring organization’s behavior, culture, preparation, expectations, and level of commitment.
You can’t bring on a recruiter to fix problems beyond their reach. That assumption is where many searches go sideways.
Not everything can be outsourced
The right recruiter or agency is responsible for delivering top talent, but successful recruiting is not a transactional purchase. It’s a collaborative team effort.
You can’t outsource a new and improved company culture. The following are all internal issues that only the hiring organization can acknowledge, address, and fix:
- Lack of proper onboarding
- Toxic employees
- Someone knowingly on the take
- Someone in management with a substance abuse problem
- Verbally abusive behavior
- Organizational disarray
- Absence of performance coaching
These are not recruiting failures. They are leadership and operational challenges.
Here are three big fails I’ve witnessed in my 13 years of recruiting.
1) One chair, two butts
The dealer principal and the GM were not aligned. The new hire arrived on day one only to discover the outgoing employee had never been terminated — and wasn’t going to be. That’s a problem not even the best recruiter can fix.
2) Misplaced talent
A candidate was recruited and hired for a specialized skill set, then placed into a menial role with no clear path toward the work they were hired to do.
3) Not as advertised
A rockstar was hired for a commission-driven role based on numbers the dealership simply could not achieve.
Where it breaks down
Each of these examples has one thing in common: the recruiting process worked. The breakdown happened after the hire entered the building.
Recruiters can identify, qualify, and close strong candidates. We can manage expectations, align compensation, and vet experience. But once a candidate becomes an employee, the outcome is no longer controlled by the recruiter — it is owned by the hiring manager and the leadership team.
This is where recruiting stops being a transaction and becomes a shared responsibility.
The most successful hires don’t happen because the recruiter got lucky. They happen because leadership stayed aligned, engaged, and accountable after the offer was signed.
When a strong candidate doesn’t succeed, it’s rarely because they lack talent. More often, the environment failed to support them. The good news is this: when leadership takes ownership of what happens after the hire, great people don’t just arrive — they stay, grow, and help move the business forward.
