What can you do to help make sure your star recruits don’t misfire?

First, apologies for the sporting references in this edition of BD Tips Wednesday.

Last weekend marked the end of the English Premier League season 2025-2026 and, surprisingly or unsurprisingly depending on your loyalties, West Ham United were one of the three teams relegated.

What caught my attention though wasn’t the result. It was the economics behind the result.

According to recent reporting (including in the Financial Times), since 2021 West Ham’s net transfer spend has exceeded £318 million. That places them among Europe’s biggest net transfer spenders during this period — despite selling their star player Declan Rice to cross town rivals Arsenal for a sizeable fee.

Think about that for a moment.

A club with a 62,000-seat stadium, one of the strongest supporter bases in England, and transfer spending north of £300 million in less than five years has been relegated from the world’s richest football competition.

Meanwhile, a club with a significantly smaller budget — AFC Bournemouth — came within touching distance of qualifying for European Championship League football.

How does this happen?

You would think the answer has to be down to a combination of two things: (2) Bad lateral recruitment; and/or (2) Bad management (on which point, several managers of West Ham have been released from their contract over the past two years).

And that got me thinking about professional services firms. Because law firms, accounting firms and other professional services firms have been on a similar gouge of lateral recruiting – often offering sizeable guaranteed incomes (in Australia the guaranteed amounts have been as high as $7M but overseas these numbers have been swamped), with no guarantee of income being given (i.e., results).

So what can you do to help make sure your star recruits don’t misfire?

The first 12 months matter more than the recruitment process

Most firms spend enormous amounts of time and money on recruitment, followed by almost no time onboarding and integrating the lateral into the team. A strong onboarding plan for senior lateral hires should answer practical questions such as:

• What skill gap is this lateral plugging?

• Who are the internal relationship builders?

• Which partners are responsible for introductions?

• Which existing clients create the best cross-selling opportunities?

• What support will business development be providing and is there an integration plan in place?

• How will momentum be measured in the first 90, 180 and 365 days?

• How will success be measured?

• What internal blockers might slow momentum?

Because if a senior lateral sits waiting for work to emerge organically, momentum disappears quickly. Confidence drops. Relationships with clients you are hoping to bring over will stall.

And eventually both sides will quietly admit: “This hasn’t worked.”

Beware the transfer fee mentality

Football clubs often assume expensive recruits will automatically change results. Professional services firms often think the same way.

Higher salary + Better title + Big Press Release = Problem solved.

Except growth rarely works like that. Because a lateral hire is not a growth strategy; it is part of a firm-wide growth strategy for previously identified shortfall areas.

In fact, pay the lateral too much and the existing partners might delight in seeing them fail.

The better question

When a star recruit underperforms, firms often ask:

“Did we hire the wrong person?”

When more often than not the better question is:

“Did we give the person the right conditions and support to succeed?”

Because occasionally the issue is not the lateral recruit but the support system around them.

West Ham will probably spend next season asking how so much investment delivered so little return. To avoid having to ask the same question, professional services firms should be asking themselves what due diligence have we done to ensure this lateral integrates with our firm and what support structure are we putting in place to help them achieve success?

And the answer to that will not come from the recruitment agent. It’ll come from the business development person you have in the room when you first discuss the need to hire the lateral…

Takeaway

Star performers rarely succeed alone. The rainmaker with the enviable client list will have exceptional internal support, strong cross-referral pathways, a trusted delivery team, or simply a brand that opened doors more easily.

If you hire the star individual, without the rest of the support structure, even exceptional people will struggle.

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