You’re a privately owned £10m business in the UK, with a profit of £1m. Stable business with ambitious plans to double in size in the next five years, which you know is achievable given the opportunity in the market.

You’ve done well to get the company to where it is, bootstrapped on hard work, obvious gains and a rough structure that keeps the ship going. Good team of 60, who all seem to enjoy what they do, and you have little in the way of staff turnover.

You don’t have the expertise to ensure the strategy, tools and future structure are fit for purpose to get you where you next need to be.

So you look to recruit your first CCO, or maybe you call it a Sales & Marketing Director – that’s the advice from your peers and a bit of research.

Agencies are okay at a more junior level, but you’ve never need to use them for your senior roles, instead employing people you know or have networked with.

You can’t see agencies being the right resource, as while they’ve supplied adequate staff, it’s always been so transactional and they don’t seem to really get what you need, nor challenge you on the things you suspect you might be doing wrong.

Given it’s a declaration of intent for the business, you advertise widely. The cost isn’t too high and you receive hundreds of CVs. You’re grateful your administrator sifts through the CVs and whittles this down to a dozen.

Psychometrics seem a good way to objectively measure suitability, so you buy an off the shelf product, and if it works maybe you’ll roll it out across the rest of the business to see what's what.

5 of the CVs are really impressive, saying all the right things, and your interview process goes swimmingly.

They meet you then the leadership team, with one stand out candidate that interviews very well, nails the presentation. They’re an ENTJ!

You offer and they accept. References don’t come back, they never do.

They start and they come in and hit the ground running hard. The sales, marketing and product teams need a shake up, so they say, and while change isn’t easy you trust them to do what’s needed.

And change things they do, with steady eddies and problem personalities moved out, high performers promoted, heavy investment in tools and automation.

Yet something isn’t right, and while it looks like things are happening, the results aren’t.

Indeed six months in, your financial performance is weaker than expected. It’s early days, perhaps you need to strip back to build better. Your replacement hires were harder to find than expected and more expensive – perhaps fresh ideas will help, although they aren’t people you’d have hired yourself.

18 months in and out your CCO goes – they resigned. Just as many of your other staff are – turnover’s through the roof. People are murmuring.

Your revenue’s up to £11m, that's something. Though profit’s down.

No need for a call to action – you know where I’m going with this.

Not all recruitment is the same.