When Settling Becomes Expensive for Everyone
Here’s a conversation that happens way too often at most staffing firms…
”Well, this candidate isn’t perfect, but they’re pretty good. Let’s send them and see what happens.”
And everyone agrees. Why? Because the client is getting impatient. Because fill rates matter. Because something is better than nothing. Good enough feels like pragmatism instead of an expensive compromise that costs everyone more than they realize.
What seems like a reasonable compromise in week three of a search turns into a performance issue in week three of the assignment. Now you have a damaged client relationship and an employee who ends up in the wrong role.
”Good enough” is never good enough.
Yes, the pressure to settle shows up regularly. The client who’s been waiting weeks for a candidate that fits. A hiring manager who keeps moving the goal posts. The internal metric that favors submittals over quality.
But here’s what happens when you give in to that pressure: you train your clients to accept mediocrity, you build a reputation for volume over quality, and you undermine your own value by proving that you are willing to compromise on the thing that’s supposed to separate you from every other competitor.
So what does holding the line on quality really look like?
It might be telling a client well into the search that you’re not going to present someone who isn’t a match. Or pushing back when they ask you to compromise on the requirements you both initially agreed on that were essential. It’s understanding that your long-term reputation is worth much more than any single placement.
Not everyone has the discipline to hold the line. But I’m challenging you to be the one who protects quality even when it’s uncomfortable. The one who tells the client the truth about why a candidate isn’t right. The one who understands that the short-term pain of extending the search is nothing compared to the long-term cost of a failed placement.
That’s what separates staffing firms that scale from those that just survive.