74% of all small businesses have made at least one bad hire. For agencies with 5 to 30 employees, each bad hire costs an average of €25,000. And most make the same mistake three times before they recognize the pattern.
The US Department of Labor puts the cost of a bad hire at around 30% of the first year's salary. With two to three wrong hires per year, you quickly land at €50,000 to €150,000. Money that in an agency of 10 to 25 people makes the difference between growth and stagnation.
But here's the point: Your recruiting process is probably not the problem. You are. Specifically: your blind spot as a founder type.
Agencies at this size grow fast. New clients, new projects, new roles. Hiring still stays a gut-feeling thing. No framework, no type understanding, no systematic analysis of who fits the team and why. Instead: "He seemed nice in the interview. Good enough."
We see these five mistakes at almost every agency. And they all have the same origin.
Mistake #1: You Hire Mini-Mes
A Rainmaker founder brings three more Rainmakers onto the team. Sounds like a power sales machine. In reality: brilliant pipeline, but delivery collapses completely. Nobody takes care of processes, timelines, or client communication after the deal.
This doesn't happen out of stupidity. It happens because we hire people who think like us. Constructor CEOs recruit system thinkers. Explorer founders look for innovators. The Rainmaker entrepreneur type builds a team of salespeople. Without type awareness, systematic homogeneity emerges.
The result: Your team multiplies your strengths. But it multiplies your blind spots just as much.
A Constructor founder with three more Constructors has perfect structures. But nobody closing deals. An Explorer surrounded by Explorers produces a hundred ideas a week. But nobody implements a single one.
The solution sounds simple but is hard in practice: A functioning core team needs at least two to three different CORE types. Not because diversity sounds nice, but because your business needs different functions that different types fill better.
But even those who hire different types often fall into the next trap.
Mistake #2: Gut Feeling Instead of Type Profile
The CareerBuilder study is clear: 74% of small businesses have hired the wrong person at least once. The main reason? No structured process.
What happens in most agency interviews: Chemistry wins. The candidate tells a good story, laughs at the right moments, has a solid resume. You think: "Fits." Three months later you realize: Doesn't fit at all.
The problem isn't that you interview badly. The problem is that you ask the wrong questions. Or rather: you don't ask the decisive questions at all.
Five questions reliably reveal a candidate's type: How do you approach a new project? What frustrates you most at work? What are you most proud of professionally? How would your colleagues describe you in three words? What's most important to you in an employer?
Sounds trivial. But the answers show you whether someone is an Operator who needs structure, or an Explorer who suffocates with too much routine. Whether a Rainmaker is sitting in front of you who withers without client contact. Or a Constructor who wants to build systems, not relationships.
DISC and MBTI deliver personality profiles. But none of them give you a role mapping for entrepreneurs. No "this person belongs in this function." If you're looking for a personality test for entrepreneurs that tells you who to deploy where: generic tests can't do that.
Okay, you've found the right type. But are they sitting in the right seat?
Mistake #3: Role Doesn't Match DNA
Anna was the most reliable person on the team. Punctual, structured, clients loved her. So she was promoted to sales lead.
Three months later: Empty pipeline. Not a single new deal. Not because Anna was bad. But because she has an Operator personality sitting in a Rainmaker role. Her boss promoted her because she was "so reliable." But reliability doesn't make a salesperson.
After switching to customer success? Best client satisfaction scores on the entire team.
This isn't an isolated case. Founders promote based on performance, tenure, chemistry. But almost never based on type fit. The question "In which role can this person best leverage their DNA?" simply isn't asked.
An Explorer entrepreneur type in an operational leadership role doesn't just become unproductive. They become toxic. Because their energy is directed at innovation, not process optimization. A Constructor in a pure networking role withers. Because they want to build systems, not make small talk.
As an agency owner, your job is to recognize this fit. Not to assign based on experience. Not on tenure. But on DNA.
Even when type and role match: There's another level that almost everyone overlooks.
Mistake #4: Ignoring Intensity
Two Rainmakers on the team sounds like double sales power. But what happens when both are strongly pronounced Rainmakers? Both with an intensity of 19 to 25 points on the CORE scale?
Turf wars. Information silos. Duplicate work. Passive aggression.
Two strong types without clear territories automatically compete. Not because they're bad people. But because their DNA pushes toward the same space. The result: Instead of double the power, you get half the productivity.
The intensity matrix shows you where your team stands: Is there a leadership vacuum because no type is strongly enough pronounced? Or are there dominance battles because two types push equally hard into the same area?
The solution: Don't just analyze WHO fits the team. Also analyze HOW STRONG the type should be. A moderately pronounced Rainmaker next to a strong Rainmaker works. Two strong Rainmakers without clear boundaries doesn't.
If you're looking for an agency founder strengths assessment that captures this: Most tools like CliftonStrengths show you strengths, but not their intensity in team context. That's the blind spot.
All of these mistakes trace back to one fundamental problem.
Mistake #5: No Team DNA Audit
Agencies grow from 5 to 15 people. From 15 to 25. And at none of these growth steps does anyone check which CORE types are actually missing.
In sales-driven agencies, Operator DNA is almost always missing. Delivery suffers, timelines slip, clients churn. In tech agencies, Rainmaker DNA is missing: brilliant work, but no pipeline. No new business, no growth.
And who compensates for the gap? You. The founder.
60-hour weeks as an entrepreneur. Not because you delegate poorly. But because you fill roles your team doesn't cover. You're simultaneously strategist, salesperson, project manager, and troubleshooter. If you're wondering who to hire next in your agency: The answer isn't in a job posting. It's in the gap of your team DNA profile.
Agency owner burnout isn't a motivation problem. It's a structural problem. You burn out because you do tasks that contradict your DNA. Because you plug holes that a proper hire should close.
The solution: A regular team DNA audit. Which CORE types are present? Which are missing? Who do you need next — not based on open positions, but on missing types?
The good news: All of this can be sorted out in 20 minutes.
The Common Denominator: You Don't Know Your Type
Five mistakes. One origin.
You hire mini-mes because you don't reflect on your own type. You rely on gut feeling because you don't have a type-based framework. You fill roles incorrectly because you don't connect DNA and function. You ignore intensities because you've never measured them. And you don't do a team DNA audit because you don't know what to look for.
Hiring isn't an HR topic. It's a self-awareness topic.
The CORE Navigator Quick Check gives you three concrete outputs in 20 minutes: Your Best Seat — the role that actually matches your entrepreneur DNA. Your Next-Hire profile — which type you need next and why. And a 7-day sprint — a concrete action plan for the first week after the report.
No comfort feedback. No vague personality profile. Strategic clarity with a 90-day plan for agency founders based on your DNA.
About the Author
Founder
Joram Hoefs is the founder of CORE-Navigator. With over a decade of experience in business consulting and personality diagnostics, he has made it his mission to develop data-driven tools that help entrepreneurs understand and leverage their unique DNA.
More posts by Joram Hoefs