40% of VP and C-suite hires fail within 18 months. This report breaks that figure down by role, stage, and search approach — and identifies the factors most associated with VP retention past the critical 24-month mark.
The widely cited figure — that 40% of VP and C-suite hires fail within 18 months — comes from a combination of HBR research on executive failure, Korn Ferry tenure data, and LinkedIn economic graph analysis of VP-level role duration at growth-stage companies. The figure is real. What is less commonly analysed is what drives it and which variables predict retention past the critical 18-month mark.
VP and C-suite failure rates are not uniform across role types. They vary significantly based on the role's organisational scope, the degree of founder-executive proximity, and the clarity of the mandate at hire.
| Role | 12-Month Failure Rate | 18-Month Failure Rate | Primary Failure Cause |
|---|---|---|---|
| VP Sales (first hire) | ~25% | ~42% | Founder-VP misalignment; stage mismatch |
| VP Engineering | ~20% | ~38% | Builder-manager mismatch; org scale mismatch |
| CFO | ~15% | ~30% | Board relationship failure; scope misalignment |
| CMO / VP Marketing | ~28% | ~45% | ROI expectation misalignment; founder conflict |
| COO | ~22% | ~38% | Authority boundary conflict; strategy misalignment |
| CTO | ~18% | ~32% | Technical vision conflict; team relationship failure |
When VP and C-suite hires fail within 18 months, the cause is rarely what it appears to be. Surface-level failure modes — "not the right fit," "performance issues," "culture mismatch" — typically trace back to one of three root causes.
The executive and the founder had different operating expectations that were never made explicit before the hire. The executive expected autonomy that the founder was not ready to give. The founder expected deference that the executive did not give. Neither party surfaced the misalignment during the search — because the search did not include a structured founder-VP fit assessment.
The executive was excellent for a company at a different stage. A VP Sales who built and scaled a 30-person sales team at a Series C company is often the wrong hire for a Series A company that needs to design the sales motion from scratch. The failure is predictable — and largely preventable with a stage-specific assessment framework.
The role that was presented to the executive during the search was materially different from the role they found when they joined. The scope had been overstated, the authority was less than described, or the operating context — team quality, product maturity, resource availability — did not match what had been communicated. These failures are the most avoidable: they result directly from an intake process that did not demand honesty about what the role actually required.
A VP hire that fails in month 14 is classified as a 12-month retention success in most reporting systems. The failure had typically been developing from month 3 or 4. The performance review process caught it late; the onboarding process did not surface the misalignment early enough for either party to address it.
The factors most strongly associated with VP and C-suite retention past the 24-month mark are consistent across role types and company stages. They are almost entirely process factors — related to how the search was run, how the offer was structured, and how the first 90 days were managed — rather than candidate quality factors.
Across 25+ Majhi Group retained search placements, 12-month retention tracks significantly above the industry benchmark — a result of the Founder-VP Fit Model assessment, the pre-offer operating agreement conversation, and the 90-day guarantee engagement that keeps the firm active through the highest-risk retention window. The 90-day guarantee is not an insurance policy; it is a commitment that the firm's incentives are aligned with retention, not placement.
20-minute confidential search assessment. We assess whether your search approach is optimised for the hire you need — using your actual mandate as working context.
Request a Search Assessment →