Counterintuitive Truths About Hiring
1. Clarity on the Role Is the First Bottleneck
Most hiring failures start before the first resume is reviewed. If the role definition is vague (unclear success outcomes, missing cultural context, fuzzy scope), even a flawless interview process won’t save you. You can’t hit a Target you haven’t clearly defined. The main culprit here is overconfidence (either in your job description, or in assuming that you and your teammates have the same picture in mind).
2. Hiring Success = Role Clarity × Interview Accuracy × Candidate Volume/Quality
These three multipliers drive hiring outcomes. If any one is broken, the process fails. You really need all three legs of the stool for this to work.
3. The Best Candidates Are Often the Least Polished
High-performing operators are usually not professional interviewees. They may be rusty, under-prepared/rehearsed, or undersell themselves. Meanwhile, weaker candidates often practice more and sound smoother. Don’t confuse polish with potential. Great interviewers will not be fooled by this window dressing.
4. Interviewing Is a Trainable, Repeatable Skill. And Most Teams Are Bad at It
Most interviewers are winging it. If interviewing were a core business function like sales or engineering, 80% of your team would be put on a performance plan. Without a shared methodology, calibration, and feedback, even well-intentioned interviewers create chaos. How can you expect great performance when you aren't training, measuring, and providing feedback on it?
5. Your Brain Is Lying to You
You are hardwired to overvalue storytelling, confidence, and recency. You’ll miss quiet high performers and overrate charismatic, extraverted wordsmiths. A structured process and disciplined debriefs are the only way to consistently extract signal from noise. Remember the two questions: "What Facet are we discussing and what is the data behind it?"
6. False Positives Are 10x More Costly Than False Negatives
Hiring someone who looks good but underperforms does more damage than passing on someone great. Mediocre hires quietly slow teams down, lower morale, and make future hiring worse. You can’t build a world-class team on “maybe.”
7. "Culture Fit" Is a Cop-Out Unless It's Defined and Observable
Most companies claim to hire for culture, but few define what that means or how to assess it. This is why getting extremely crisp with the Competency language in your Target is so crucial. Otherwise, culture fit becomes a proxy for “people like me.”
8. One Interview Hour Can Cost You Millions
For important roles, you're often making a multi-year, seven-figure bet based on a one-hour conversation. If you’re not doing everything you can to have an edge here, you're losing a lot of money (and runway).
9. Reference Calls, Done Well, Are a Superpower
References are often rushed or skipped entirely. Most treat them as a formality. But when done in-depth, following the Talgo methodology, and having a perspective on who you want to speak with, they can unlock tremendous signal (and be a great onboarding resource).
10. Mis-Hires Don’t Just Fail, They Reshape the Company
Every bad hire changes the culture, team velocity, and hiring bar. High performers leave. Mediocrity becomes the norm. This is one reason why getting dialed in on the Prospector (screening) interview is so important.
