Checked our applicant tracking system the other day and found out I’m closing in on 1,000 people I personally interviewed over the last year for @getTeamflow. Learnings below.

Look for attitude over aptitude. You can never fix a bad attitude, and a single person with one can ruin the culture of an entire organization.

Early in my career, I used to be surprised seeing managers fire high performers with a bad attitude — now I understand.

Experience is a surprisingly poor predictor of performance.

This cuts both ways — don’t gloss over someone’s weaknesses because they have a ton of experience, nor overlook someone’s potential because of their lack of experience.

Look for drivers, not passengers. If the person you’re hiring has even just a few years of experience, it’s easy to see which category they fall into. Did they take charge, or did they stagnate for years?

There’s an element of adversariality in every interview — at the end of the day, you’re making a hire / no-hire decision based on what the candidate tells you.

But there are a few effective ways to still get signal.

First, ask them to. “You can be perfectly honest. We all have weaknesses, and any sufficiently long career has had screwups.”

This isn’t a trick, it’s true — someone who doesn’t open up about their fails is either lying or has not taken enough risks. Red flag either way.

Second, tell them you’ll talk to their references (more on how to do that below).

“What will people say about you?”

Not “would” — will.

(This one is from “Who,” the awesome book on hiring by Geoff Smart)

Third, dig, dig, dig. You start as a squirrel looking for acorns, you end as a pit bull locking your jaws onto something the candidate said in passing.

A candidate once told me “then had a two month stint, not worth going over.”

(It was very worth going over)

One way to dig is to ask for actual examples and stories for everything the candidate mentions.

Another way is to never let a candidate get away with not revealing weaknesses and fails.

Ask the question 5 times if you need to. Let awkward silences settle.

Fifth, ask questions in a leading way that assumes the embarrassing answer is the right one.

Eg:
CANDIDATE: I can be a bit perfectionist at times
ME: and that’s led you to missing deadlines?
CANDIDATE: yeah

Always conduct reference checks (RCs), ideally backdoor ones. It’s a small world, it’s rare that you cannot find a common connection.

But you should be able to collect disqualifying insights even from front door checks — otherwise why bother running them?

A few of my favorite questions during reference checks:

“What were areas for improvement for this person back then?”

(Positive framing, includes recognition the person may have improved since then)

“Is this person in the top 10% of people you’ve worked with?” (If yes, follow up with “top 5? Top 2%?”)

Common advice is to ask for a ranking on 10, but that’s been useless in my experience. Everyone gets a 8-9. Not so with percentile questions.

During reference calls, ask about the weaknesses the candidate mentioned. You’d be surprised how often this happens:

YOU: any area for improvement?
REFERENCE: none
YOU: they mentioned [weakness]
REFERENCE: oh yeah that was a huge problem

One word of caution: if you do this well, you *will* find weaknesses — everyone has one!

Great power comes with great responsibility — if you’re good at finding the truth about people, you also cannot let that stop you from hiring anybody.

Finally, if there’s a doubt, there’s no doubt. I always feel ridiculously excited about everyone I make an offer to — if I don’t, I don’t make an offer. Do listen to your gut.