Hiring mistakes cost more than you think. Last week, we discussed the hidden costs of bad hires—reduced productivity, disengagement, and turnover expenses that can reach 200% of an employee’s salary.
This week, we’re addressing a critical but overlooked cause: flawed job descriptions.
The Real Reason You’re Struggling to Find the Right Talent
Most job descriptions are transactional. They focus on skills, experience, and job duties but fail to define what truly drives success: required behaviors.
HR teams and hiring managers, despite their best efforts, often don’t have the tools, training, or experience to craft job descriptions that predict who will thrive in a given role. Instead, they default to:
✅ A generic list of qualifications that anyone can copy from LinkedIn.
✅ Buzzwords that sound good but mean little in practice.
✅ A “wish list” of skills instead of a true success profile.
The result? Companies keep hiring candidates who look good on paper but don’t perform in practice.
The Missing Ingredient: Required Behaviors
Technical skills can be taught. But behaviors—how a person naturally operates—determine whether they will succeed or struggle in a role.
For example, imagine hiring a Chief Revenue Officer responsible for leading an aggressive growth strategy. Would you prioritize someone with 20 years of sales experience? Or someone with:
✔ A natural drive for strategic risk-taking
✔ A track record of decisive, high-impact leadership
✔ The ability to motivate and align sales teams toward aggressive goals
Experience tells you what someone has done. Behaviors tell you how they will execute in your organization.
Our Proven Approach: How We Fix This Gap
At CXO Accelerator, one of our partners is an executive recruiter with decades of experience placing leaders at Fortune 500 companies and a proprietary methodology. Together, our approach ensures that every job description includes:
🔹 First-Year Success Markers – What the candidate must accomplish in their first 12 months (not just what they “should have” on their résumé).
🔹 Behavioral Modeling – Identifying the top behaviors required for success and aligning them with company culture.
🔹 Eliminating Hiring Bias – Ensuring hiring teams align on the right candidate profile before recruiting starts, eliminating personal bias and “gut feel” hires.
Most companies don’t fail because they hire the wrong skills. They fail because they hire the wrong behaviors.
Adding Science to the Art of Hiring
Defining required behaviors is the first step. But how do you objectively measure whether a candidate truly aligns?
This is where Predictive Index Behavioral Assessments (BAs) and Cognitive Assessments (CAs) come in.
✔ BAs reveal how a candidate is naturally wired to work—whether they thrive in fast-paced, strategic roles or structured, process-driven environments.
✔ CAs measure problem-solving speed, ensuring the candidate can keep up with the complexity of the role.
These assessments, combined with a behavior-driven job description, provide a data-backed hiring process that eliminates guesswork and ensures the right person is in the right role from day one
Hiring the Right People Starts with the Right Job Description
If your hiring process starts with a templated job description, you’re already behind.
We help business leaders define what success looks like before they start hiring—so they get it right the first time.
🔹 What’s the next key hire you need to make? Let’s discuss how we can help you build a behavior-driven job description that attracts top performers.
