Economic turbulence can feel like a good excuse to cut corners on hiring - fewer candidates, tighter budgets, and pressure to fill roles yesterday. But take it from someone who’s been watching hiring trends for over 50 years: compromising on talent when the stakes are high is like trying to patch a leaky roof with duct tape. It won’t hold. And it’ll cost you more than you think.
Our VP, Andy Williams, recently led a thought leadership presentation titled The Importance of Hiring A Players During Economic Uncertainty - and one key takeaway stood out: During economic uncertainty, it’s not a matter of whether you can afford to fill open jobs with A Players - it’s that you can’t afford not to.
Andy’s been in the trenches. He’s led hiring at organizations like Kaiser Permanente and knows what happens when your hiring strategy lags behind the business realities. His message? A Players are the only people who can carry your strategy forward when everything else feels uncertain.
Let’s not forget hiring isn’t just about who fills the seat. It’s about who executes the plan. And economic slowdowns are exactly when the cracks start to show - not just in markets, but in your teams. B and C Players might coast in stable times. But during downturns? They get exposed. They stall progress, shake confidence, and eat up valuable management time.
Andy said it best during the session: “A vacant seat is a risk. But the wrong person in that seat is a liability.”
What’s dangerous is that bad hires don’t always blow up loudly. Sometimes they’re just subtly off - underperforming, overpromising, draining energy from your A Players who are stuck picking up the slack. It’s like rot in the foundation. You don’t notice until the walls start shifting.
One of the biggest hiring traps? Believing a resume is a reliable predictor of performance. Andy reminded us: resumes are often fictitious marketing documents. They’re designed to impress, not confess. And too many hiring processes fall for them.
Topgrading doesn’t. We dig deeper. We use The Topgrading Interview - a structured, chronological conversation that walks through a candidate’s entire education and career. We make them set up reference calls with past managers - no dodging accountability. We don’t rely on hype or gut feel. We focus on real patterns of performance - the stuff that actually predicts success.
When times are uncertain, you need people who can navigate complexity, not get swallowed by it. That’s why companies who commit to Topgrading don’t just survive downturns - they come out stronger.
Here’s the kicker: hiring A Players during tough times doesn’t just preserve your strategy. It accelerates it. When the dust settles, companies with A Players move faster, execute cleaner, and retain talent longer. The others? They spend the next fiscal year cleaning up the mess.
To be clear: we recognize that when the economy heads south, sometimes it’s necessary to cut back on hiring, and also to lay off employees. But during those weak economic times, when you have a crucial job that is open, fill it using extremely rigorous and disciplined Topgrading methods.
🎥 If you missed Andy’s presentation, now’s your chance to catch up. It’s not just a talk - it’s a reality check.
👉 Watch the full session here
We regularly host thought leadership presentations just like this one.
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Dr. Brad Smart is Founder and CEO of Topgrading, Inc. Topgrading is dedicated to helping companies of all sizes maximize the hiring of high performers. Topgrading assesses candidates for senior positions (where the costs of hiring mistakes are high) and trains all managers to create teams of almost all high performers. Brad has seven published books on hiring; the most recent three (the first, second, and third editions of Topgrading) were all best sellers.
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