• Secretary Problem. Picking an candidate is inherently hard, expect > 30% not so great hires!
  • Culture fit evaluations can invite bias into your process if interviewers see it as simply a way to assess a candidate’s likeability, rather than how they align with your company’s core values.
  • You want people who will fit in and flourish at your company while, at the same time, challenging the outlook and ideas of your employees.
  • Never ever hire a person you feel is overly ego-driven.
  • Overall manager should personally vet the new hires
  • Who to hire/promote etc should be done by a commitee with believability weighted decision making
    • How the decision is made should be transparent, but not the individual situation
  • Better to miss great hire than making a bad hire. Veto rights should be given to multiple people
  • First impression is biased and overly important
  • Use structured interview questions or sample work, and score on consistant rubics. e.g. Tell me about a time when you [outcome that is needed for this role]. Avoid unstructured if you can - people over-estimate themselves in evaluating other people
  • the interview skillset is not equal, ask the best interviewers to make this a bigger part of their job
  • have at least two interviewers assess each value or key competency
  • Expert interviewers are often the reason a candidate joins a company
  • Team should feel the alignment of the tech perspective with the candidate
  • Candidate can be a leader or follower regardless of current status and self-esteem
  • Don’t sell the position by cool tech. Instead, look for people who wants to own, interested in the business, and customer
  • Easier to hire 90th percentile than training avg person to 90th percentile
    • “Instead of 150 new people, are you sure you don’t want 75 people whom you pay twice as much because they have twice as much experience and can be higher performers?”
  • Use closed tech quesitons to filter out obvious nos
    • ask why certain tech is needed, and then dive deep into details to see the max depth