The Mistake You're Likely Making When Hiring

We hired 133 people.
Had 68k users.
0 funding.

Even then - I did every final interview for new hires.

No matter the role.

It was the single greatest use of my time, because it protected our team from a mistake you're likely making.

Here's what I did in these interviews 🧵

— Patrick Campbell (@Patticus) June 19, 2023

Your number one priority as an executive is your team.

You push them.
You unblock them.
You protect them.

And most importantly you make sure every new hire raises the bar.

The problem: we suck at this.

It's really hard, mainly because the way we interview makes it harder.

— Patrick Campbell (@Patticus) June 19, 2023

Most recruiting is designed for deception.

"Our company is amazing"
"Well, I'm amazing, too"

You fix this a bit with:
- A+ recruiters
- Test projects
- Hiring frameworks
- Aptitude tests
- References

But the biggest help I've found - a thorny, minimal B.S. final interview.

— Patrick Campbell (@Patticus) June 19, 2023

Most final interviews are about selling a candidate on the company.

We did the opposite.
And added a final culture check.

First 30:
- Fit questions
- Controversial case study

Second 30:
- Their questions
- Hard pitch on why we're terrible

Here's how it all works 👇

— Patrick Campbell (@Patticus) June 19, 2023

As a CEO your job is to protect culture fit.

Your team does too, but they *need* the hire, so there's bias.

Doing final interviews shields this, especially when starting from the premise the candidate is NOT a culture fit.

So how do you test for culture fit?

— Patrick Campbell (@Patticus) June 19, 2023

You need your own culture questions, but I find these two work wonders:

1. What are the 5 happiest moments of your life?
2. What are 2 of the top 10 worst moments of your life?

There's no "right" answer, but they open up the conversation.

And lead into testing temperament 👇

— Patrick Campbell (@Patticus) June 19, 2023

The biggest hiring mistake is not testing for how someone handles conflict.

If a hire is misaligned on this, your whole team is screwed.

They'll be distracted constantly.

So we implemented a (somewhat) controversial case study in all final interviews.

Here it is 👇

— Patrick Campbell (@Patticus) June 19, 2023

Conflict resolution case study:
- Imagine someone posts something they found online in slack.
- Someone else replies, "ha I saw that and thought it was [offensive word]"
- What do you do?
- What do you think the company should do?

No matter their answer, challenge them.

— Patrick Campbell (@Patticus) June 19, 2023

10% of people interviewed think the person who said the offensive remark should be fired.

I'd always ask:
"What if they truly didn't know it was offensive?"

Most stood firm.

I'd then explain how we'd handle it, which opens up the conversation about conflict.

— Patrick Campbell (@Patticus) June 19, 2023

Most conflict at a company isn't binary.

Squabbles.
Disagreements.
Misunderstandings.

There's no "right" answer.

But there's a "right" way to handle this type of conflict (at least imho).

A conflict case study lets you align in the hiring process BEFORE you make the hire.

— Patrick Campbell (@Patticus) June 19, 2023

I close all final interviews with plenty of time for questions.

But I don't spin my answers.

I openly talk about our struggles, problems, and blind spots.

They'll find out about them their first month. I'd rather get them excited for the challenge, not nervous I oversold them.

— Patrick Campbell (@Patticus) June 19, 2023