Many companies have to learn it the hard way—hiring a superstar employee may cause your business more harm than good. Recruiting new employees isn’t just about hiring the best, most experienced applicant because sometimes, it’s better to hire a less-experienced one.

It’s easy to look in awe at that sparkling resume with million-dollar sales deals closed, impressive network, and a top education to go with it. As much as a star would seem like the best addition to drive sales and employee motivation up, this isn’t always the case.

In an article posted by Inc.com, a start-up New York city licensing firm shares how a top new hire became the company’s nightmare. Recruiting new employees proved to be harder than they thought.

The Wildflower group was only on its third year in operation with a staff of around 10 people when it was faced with the opportunity to hire a top salesperson from one of the largest companies in the industry. The employee was highly experienced; to put it simply she was a certified superstar. For the company owner, she was the breakthrough they needed to zoom to the top. Everyone was thrilled.

But the succeeding months did not turn out as expected. The new hire wanted to be treated like a superstar, literally. Being accustomed to working in a big corporation, she was looking for the pampering she had been used to and would not work with the existing team. She rejected suggestions, would not do even simple admin duties, and didn’t care that much about helping the company cut down on expenses such as her travel costs. From where she came they never bothered about those things. When given direction by her supervisors, she would argue and not listen. Even worst, the star wasn’t bringing in the sales they had expected her to.

That’s a hard way to learn things, isn’t it?

After a few more months, some young employees seemed to start emulating the “superstar” behavior. At this point, they weren’t only suffering from the superstar’s less than stellar performance and big-corporation whims, the other employees are getting affected, too. That is perhaps the biggest drawback of hiring a superstar gone bad; the existing staff will look up to him or her, so their attitude, whether good or bad, will surely rub off on others!

Don’t Make the Same Mistake

Hiring managers, who have experienced this horror in some form, learned that recruiting new employees should go beyond blue-chip credentials. Experts say that a star employee’s stellar performance does not depend solely on individual talent, but also on the resources and infrastructure given by the company. This is the reason why their success isn’t 100% guaranteed if they jump from one organization to another.

Superstar employees are also used to high pay and many benefits, but providing these to a new hire just because he is a star may spark resentment across the organization.

When recruiting new employees, don’t just stop at the impressive golden-resume, but try to carefully asses if the individual’s personality and working style will complement the existing team.

© 2013 Incedo Group, LLC