Perfect hiring doesn’t exist

Something that I think about often is the perfect match between the job requirements and the person who gets hired.

You can use all the tools, tricks and hiring hacks in the world. You should. They help.

But people are still people.

Even the best hiring process won’t be perfect. And that’s okay.

There’s a lot of noise out there about “eliminating the risk of a bad hire.” That if you just follow someone’s method, or pay someone’s fee, you’ll get a guaranteed outcome.

No one can guarantee the perfect hire. Not me, not anyone.

Take the UK Special Forces selection process. It’s one of the most demanding on the planet. It runs for ~6 months. Sometimes longer. It includes physical testing, psychological screening, interrogation scenarios, peer reviews, and constant observation by people who’ve been through it all before.

It’s designed to strip away everything you present on the surface and test who you are underneath. When you’re cold, exhausted, under pressure and totally alone with your thoughts.

Why do they do this?

Because when it matters most, when the odds are against you in an intense gun battle, a fire-fight, a hostage rescue situation etc; you need to know that the person next to you has got your back and got what it takes to overcome those odds.

Someone like this guy 👇🏻

And after all this, they still don’t get it right every time.

Because people are complicated.

They evolve. They’re imperfect. They try to impress. They want to do a good job. A great hire today might hit a wall in six months for reasons no interview process could predict.

Hiring’s not an exact science. It’s structured judgment built on gathering the right signals, asking the right questions, and filtering out the noise. It’s about stacking the odds in your favour, not pretending.

What you’re trying to do is develop a process that reduces risk, not one that pretends it doesn’t exist.

You’re not hiring machines. You’re hiring humans. And humans are wonderful and frustratingly unpredictable.

This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be aiming high or that hires won’t work out. But if we focus on building our capability in hiring, that seems like a good way to minimise the risk.

Here are 8 things I implore you to think about with your next hires.

1. Clarify what this role needs to deliver in the next 6, 9, or 12 months. Get multiple opinions from the people whose opinions you trust – you should all agree.
2. Be crystal clear about what competencies and experience are needed in someone to fulfil the deliverables of the role.
3. Write these down to construct a Position Description.
4. Share this with the candidates you interview.
5. Pull together a hiring team. Hiring decision should be collaborative decision making, not one persons opinion.
6. Be clear about what values are important to you and your team. You may or may not have defined these yet – that’s fine, start now.
7. Look for these values in your candidates, along with the competencies and experience needed.
8. Only compromise on the competencies that can be learned, not on values. This rarely ends well.

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Thanks for being here. Have a brilliant week.

Weekly newsletter drops

• Monday 10:30am – Monday by the Numbers: Data-driven insights on startup hiring trends
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Need hiring help?

If you’re struggling with a specific hiring challenge, I still offer 1:1 strategy calls through my consultancy, Crew. Book a 15-minute clarity call here

Simon