A few years back before the economy tanked I had a director level position that we were literally begging to fill. We had very few qualified resumes and after cycling through the candidates a number of times we finally cobbled together 5 candidates to interview that were potentially qualified. Hard to fathom for a job that paid well into 6 figures but we nearly went begging.
The interview team generally agreed on the ranking of candidates and our favored candidate seemed promising enough. Interviewed well, seemed to have the right background and people seemed to like him. He had a little bit of a story that went with him but a solid explanation as to why he was interested in taking the job.
All seemed good until we started the offer process. He negotiated every point and made very significant demands on relocation and some other compensation items. I started getting some feedback from the HR team that he seemed a little high maintenance. I started to second guess whether he was the right fit and talked it over with my boss. She felt strongly he was a great add and that we should close the deal. I pushed back but she argued that we had been looking for 6 months and that my acting in the role was tying me up too much.
Having a lot of respect for my boss I gave in and went forward with closing the deal. He ended up dragging us through the wringer and getting a lot more then he ended up being worth. The voice in my head kept telling me this was a mistake but I was determined to make it work. He finally started and initially seemed OK but within a few weeks I started seeing him playing politics and people were starting to come to me with complaints. Over the next several months we had several behavioral discussions about his office politics, his treatment of his team, his orientation towards diversity, and technical judgement. He was turning out to be nightmare employee. His bad judgement continued unabated until one day he stepped so far outside the bounds that we fired him. He cost the company $100's of thousands of dollars and hurt the organization.
When I look back on this experience there were red flags all over the place. His blatant arrogance, his poor treatment of HR, and his unrelenting demands all were serious warning signs. They were much clearer in hindsight but none the less my gut reaction picked up on the signs and told me he would be a problem. I let myself be convinced by a highly paid headhunter's praise and my boss's well meaning intentions to ease my workload. I found my self a year later wishing I had followed my gut. Pay attention to that voice it often has sage advice.
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