The Talgo Blog

Follow this checklist to scan for “low-hanging” fruit at your company’s hiring process, covering everything from role definition to closing the deal.

1. Using Generic Job Descriptions

Problem: Those boilerplate job descriptions won't tell you anything useful. They’re too focused on responsibilitie...

Time management is one of the biggest differentiators between elite and average interviewers. You can expect a skilled interviewer to get 2-3x the number of actionable stories compared to a typical interviewer.

Obviously, those additional data points increase your hiring accuracy, as you will hear ...

Good interviewing is paradoxically easier and harder than the typical way that most people interview.

The main reason it’s easier is because it turns out that you actually don’t have to ask convoluted, multi-part questions about ultra-specific topics in order to get great data from the candidate. (...

The amount of hiring advice can sometimes be overwhelming. You can reduce a lot of the noise by focusing on the two types of errors that are possible and then working systematically to reduce them.

1. There are two types of selection errors in hiring: hiring the wrong person (false positives) and no
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A cornerstone of our hiring philosophy is the Target: a document with a discrete list of Results Expected and Competencies.

Taking the time to create this document has many benefits that we’ve discussed before: getting internal alignment, informing your external communications to candidates, creati...

There are two common mistakes many companies make when screening candidates.

During my time at Palantir Technologies, I conducted around 500 screening interviews (via both phone and Zoom). I also shadowed—and was shadowed by—dozens of interviewers at the company so I got to see the patterns around ...

Nobody wants to blow up a big job opportunity for their beloved former colleague. When you speak to references, they are often even more reluctant to talk about a candidate’s weaknesses than the candidate is. It’s important to get creative in the way you ask questions to ensure you get an accurate p...

Thinking, Fast and Slow

In his groundbreaking book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, psychologist Daniel Kahneman introduces two systems of the human mind. System 1 operates automatically and quickly, driven by instinct and emotion. System 2 is deliberative and logical, calculating and conscious.

While Sy...

A short post this week on a simple—but difficult—topic. When you like a candidate but they are deficient in one part of the Target (scorecard), what do you do?

An example would be a candidate that scores well across all Facets of the Target except one (e.g. “concise communicator”), where they have ...