The New Payroll Talent Game: Why the Old Rules Don't Apply Anymore

Hey, Payroll Disruptors!

Grab your coffee and brace yourself - because getting hiring wrong just got a $4.2 million price tag.

?? ICYMI: A former Bybit payroll manager was sentenced to nearly 10 years for embezzling $4.2M from the company【??Full story here】.

Do you think bad hiring decisions only cost time??Consider multi-million-dollar fraud, reputational damage, and a decade-long PR nightmare.

The reality? Payroll is a high-risk, high-trust function. Get payroll hiring wrong, and the consequences go beyond poor retention rates - they can cripple a business, destory a brand, and often the ramifications result in employees running for the exits or substantial fines.

?? The "Payroll Prophet Disclaimer" ??

Quick heads-up: I’m peering into my crystal ball here (okay, it’s just my coffee mug) to predict where payroll hiring is heading. These are just my caffeinated thoughts after 20+ years in payroll recruitment so please do not take them as gospel!  However, side effects may include: sudden urges to disrupt payroll, AI-induced excitement, and an irresistible need to revolutionise everything!  You have been warned...??        

?? Real Talk: The Recruitment Drama

So, how do you avoid hiring disasters and ensure your next payroll leader isn’t siphoning off millions?

Let’s cut through the noise: 57% of recent hires aren’t working out. Ouch! But why?

?? It’s NOT a skills gap problem. It’s a role fit issue (46%). it's a cultural misalignment problem (44%). It's an engagement challenge (78.4% of top talent ignores calls, emails, or LinkedIn messages from people they don't know or trust).

That’s right—finding talent isn’t the challenge anymore. Engaging, securing, and keeping talent? That’s where the battle is now. ?(Discover more stats, via my recent article here)

I know, I’m the CEO of JGA Recruitment Group , so I realise how this sounds - but hear me out. I’m not saying finding talent is easy, but platforms like LinkedIn have made it easier than ever to tap into a huge network of professionals who could be the right fit. Sure, agencies like ours have access to deeper talent pools, but that’s not the point I want to make today. The real challenge now is engaging the talent you find. This is where many companies are missing the mark and ultimately losing the battle.

Numbers don’t lie:

• ?? 70% of businesses report increased competition for well-qualified talent.
• ?? 77% are struggling to attract experienced candidates (up from 49% last year!).
• ?? One-third of job skills have changed in just three years—and that pace is accelerating.
• ?? The average time to fill a senior role is 62 days. ( JGA Recruitment Group do it in 19 days).

?? And if you get hiring wrong, you could be looking at more than just inefficiencies—you could be hiring the next payroll embezzler. ??

According to St. Paul's Chambes, Payroll fraud costs UK companies around ￡12 billion per year!*        

In 2025, companies won’t have the budget to hire twice for the same role. Hiring should not be about cutting corners, because those corners can end up being very expensive indeed!

*Source

?? Welcome to Recruitment 2.0

Here’s what’s keeping me excited (and slightly terrified) about payroll hiring in 2025:

?? Specialist Agencies are becoming more valuable than gold!

?? Generic recruiting? That’s so 2023. AI is flooding the market with automated job postings and mass outreach, but let’s be real - candidates are ignoring it.

?? Culture is King. Finding someone who truly "fits" is like solving a Rubik’s cube blindfolded. AI can’t crack it (yet!), and direct-hire methods lack the trust required to engage high-level payroll professionals.

Meanwhile...

?? Speed Matters More Than Ever because time costs money. Every hour you spend interviewing, training or onboarding a candidate is another hour away from the vital strategic tasks you were employed to manage! At JGA Recruitment Group our average time to hire is just 19 days. Boom! ??. What we are even more proud of, is our retention stats show that over 96.7% of our placements are still with the same employer 12 months later. ????

?? Numbers That’ll Make Your Head Spin

I know, I know , more stats. But these are juicy:

? Passive Talent Access & Employer Persuasion

• The best payroll professionals aren’t job hunting. You have to actively engage them.
• Training a current employee for a new role? It costs up to 40% of their salary.
• Companies with weak employer brands pay 10% higher salaries to attract the same talent.
• Internal hiring cannot build trust quickly enough to engage top talent - hence, they are more likely to trust and engage external recruiters.
• Recruiters specialise in building relationships and persuading top candidates to move.
• Industry retention rate? The Industry average is 43%. At JGA, ours is 96.7%.

? Speed & Market Reach

• Often Internal talent teams have to learn the market and are reliant on buzzword searches which means Internal hiring typically takes 225% longer to recruit than using an external agency.
• A poor internal transition leads to disengagement and turnover, which can cost 2x the salary of a departing employee.
• Specialist recruiters reduce time-to-hire and increase placement accuracy because they already fully grasp the nuances, opportunities and threats that lurk in the market.

? Specialist Hiring Needs a Specialist Approach

• Payroll compliance, global mobility, and AI-driven payroll roles are not entry-level hires. Companies used to think hiring payroll talent was easy because it was a "transactional role," but that is no longer the case.
• Internal recruiters lack the deep industry knowledge and networks to attract elite talent. Hence, internal talent teams often partner with external agencies to navigate this gap.
• A global tech firm spent 6 months trying to fill a Payroll Director role internally. When they came to us, we filled the position within 3 weeks.
• Many professionals?don’t trust internal hiring promises?(e.g., unclear career progression, and lack of leadership investment). A?third-party recruiter is more credible?when positioning opportunities.

The wrong payroll hire can cost you millions. Don’t take the risk.

• Here's a wild stat. Did you know that internal talent LinkedIn cold outreach barely hits 21.6% engagement? Here at JGA, we're cruising at 90%+ response rates. (I know, I know, another humble brag! ??).? But here's the real talk – think about your own inbox. How many random InMail's are you ignoring right now? (It's okay, we all do it!)

Yet you're here, reading this. If I dropped you a message saying, "Quick coffee chat this week?" chances are you'd respond.         

Why?

Because we've got something special here. You may have tuned into one of my?The Payroll Podcast?episodes, nodded along to my industry rants, or even lip-synched to my catchy payroll song, “My Payroll Career.” Perhaps I helped you land your dream role. Whatever brought you here, we've built trust. And trust? That secret sauce lets us consistently engage top talent when others just get left on 'read.'

The result? When our clients need industry superstars, we don't just find them – we get them to pick up the phone. Finding candidates in recruitment used to be the challenge (and of course, it still is one of them), but like payroll, the recruitment space has also become more complex and more AI-driven than ever before. Subsequently, the harder challenge in 2025 isn't candidate attraction to an opportunity; it's talent engagement. ??

??? If engagement fails, companies end up right back at external recruitment—losing time and money.

The cost of a poor hire can be significant!

Here's a breakdown:

1. Direct Costs:

• Recruitment Costs include?advertising the role, agency fees, interviewing, background checks, and hiring events. These can add up quickly, especially if you have to go through the process multiple times.
• Onboarding?and?training Costs involve?time and resources spent training the new hire, getting them up to speed, and integrating them into the team. If the hire doesn’t work out, this becomes a sunk cost - I feel exhausted just writing this!
• Salary & Benefits: The salary, benefits, and any bonuses paid to the employee who doesn't work out. This includes potential severance pay or compensation during the termination process.

2. Indirect Costs:

• Lost Productivity: A poor hire can take time to complete tasks or might make mistakes that require correction, disrupting the workflow and decreasing team productivity.
• Impact on Team Morale: A poor hire can affect the team's performance and morale, as colleagues may have to pick up the slack or deal with conflicts arising from the new hire's poor fit.
• Manager Time (if you are reading this, that's likely YOUR time): Managers spend time coaching, supervising, and troubleshooting the issues caused by a poor hire, which takes away from more strategic activities.
• Turnover Costs: If the poor hire leaves (or is let go), you face the costs of recruiting again, plus potential knowledge loss and the impact on client relationships or projects.
• Employer Brand: Consistently hiring the wrong people can damage your reputation in the job market, making it harder to attract top talent in the future.

Estimated Costs:

• Studies by the CIPD and REC show that the total costs can be substantial, costing businesses between ￡42,000 to ￡132,000 when you factor in recruitment, training, lost productivity, and turnover costs .
• That figure multiples when you consider that 57% of hires in the last year weren't working out, with 46% citing poor role fit and 44% pointing to cultural misalignment. This not only leads to wasted resources but also increases turnover, further escalating costs .

?? The Secret Sauce

Want to know why our numbers at JGA Recruitment Group are so juicy? Because it has taken us two decades to build the level of trust, we now have in the payroll industry. You can't fake that - believe me, many have tried! It's like what Stephen M.R. Covey says in "Trust and Inspire" (great book, by the way, and he has also been on my show – which you can listen to here – sorry, another humble brag, eek!) – but the reality is, people simply don't buy from or engage with people they don't trust.

?? The Future's Calling (And It's Not Going to Voicemail!)

Look, I know the phrase "war for talent" has become a cliché?(but all clichés exist for a reason).?Hence, as AI reshapes the world of payroll, finding the right payroll talent isn't getting easier either. In fact, it's getting trickier. Why? As payroll becomes more complex, it becomes harder to find the people who can manage these new layers of complexity.

So, what is going to separate the players from the spectators? Here's my take:

• Deep Industry Smarts: We're not talking about "I-read-it-on-LinkedIn" knowledge. We mean the battle-tested, been-there-done-that-got-the-payroll-scars kind of expertise. It's also the expertise my team and I at JGA Recruitment have and possess! ??
• Power Networks: Not just connections that look good on paper, but relationships that survive system crashes, strict deadlines, and those "interesting" year-end moments ??
• Culture Match Wizardry: It's like being a cultural alignment talent matchmaker with a PhD in workplace chemistry. Part science, part intuition, part magic, it's our job ??
• Speed-of-Light Learning: If you're not evolving faster than AI, you're already behind! ??

The future belongs to those who can spot talent that others miss and engage people others can't reach. (And yes, having a sense of humour helps too! ??)

?? Let’s Talk Payroll Hiring Horror Stories

• ? What’s the biggest hiring mistake you’ve seen in payroll?
• ? Have you ever inherited a payroll mess from a bad hire? How did you fix it?
• ? If you could design the ultimate payroll background check, what would it include?

?? Other Payroll Tech News

• Most Extensive Independent EWA Research to Date by Volante Labs, Uncovers a $1 Trillion Payroll Revolution - business wire press release

?? Other Payroll Disruptions

• Former Bybit payroll manager sentenced to nearly 10 years for stealing $4.2M - Cryptopolitan
• JGA Recruitment Expands to Help Businesses Work Smarter and Grow Faster - EINPresswire

?? Amplify Your Payroll Prowess

?? Podcast guest spots | ?? Newsletter sponsorships | ?? Webinars with top payroll experts

Want in? Message me at [email protected].

?? Stay smart. Stay ahead. Subscribe to our weekly payroll newsletter at https://jgarecruitment.com/payroll-newsletter-sign-up/ - it's like a shot of espresso for your payroll brain!

Stay curious, stay hungry. Adaptability is your superpower.

Best Wishes,

@Nick Day

Founder of www.JGARecruitment.com??

?? [email protected]

P.S. Let's talk about Whether you're hunting for payroll talent or looking to level up your career. The future waits for no one! Contact: [email protected] or my fabulous team at JGA Recruitment Group !

Disclaimer: This newsletter is independent and does not imply endorsement by any mentioned entities.