Strategic perspectives on hiring, talent acquisition, and building the teams that drive company growth.
Founders making a first sales hire often let the most experienced candidate define the role. Each finalist then pitches the function they ran
New hire performance often drops after a move, even with a strong track record.
Entry-level hiring has fallen, and AI gets the blame. Two Federal Reserve studies point
Most companies end a hiring loop with a meeting they call a debrief.
Founders making a first sales hire often let the most experienced candidate define the role. Each finalist then pitches the function they ran last time, and the most convincing playbook wins. This article examines what sales research says about experience, and how defining the role with a partner who has built sales teams changes the search.
Candidates can trace a company’s departures on LinkedIn long before an offer call. At growth-stage companies, every resignation is visible to the team that stays and the candidates who look. This article examines how a founder’s career promise, launchpad or long-tenure team, decides what a departure means, and four moves that keep the story on track.
Most hiring managers walk into the first interview with assumptions from the resume and spend the call checking them. That confirmation call misses what a resume can’t show and leaves strong candidates unengaged. This article examines how to put the role’s real challenge on the table, assess and sell in the same conversation, and remove friction.
Only about half of job candidates trust that the jobs they apply for are real, and AI has made every posting read the same. Growth-stage founders who hide the messy parts of a role lose the one signal candidates still believe. This article examines how a realistic job preview, framed as the reason the role exists, attracts and keeps the right hire.
New hire performance often drops after a move, even with a strong track record. Research on star analysts and investment bank hires shows part of every track record came from the old company’s people and systems. Founders who expect proven hires to arrive fully formed risk replacing good people. This article examines borrowed performance and how to supply it.
Entry-level hiring has fallen, and AI gets the blame. Two Federal Reserve studies point elsewhere: how people work changed, and the ambient feedback new hires once absorbed from experienced colleagues went with it. Leaders who never assigned that feedback to anyone now hold a hire that cannot develop. This article examines the evidence and what deliberate has to mean.
Most companies end a hiring loop with a meeting they call a debrief. In practice it is a read-out: each interviewer restates the verdict already in their scorecard and nobody’s position moves. Hiring involves two decisions, not one, and only the second needs a room. This article examines what an interview debrief is actually for, and the four questions a real one answers.
At most growth-stage companies the hiring bar is not a document — it is the senior engineer running the technical loop, evaluating on instincts nobody wrote down. The invisible burn is the compounding cost of that unexamined evaluator seat. This article covers the three seats a Staff engineer actually occupies, and what a checked evaluator seat looks like.
Startups that begin hiring managers and salespeople within a year of founding are 20 to 40 percent more likely to fail, and no more likely to exit. For growth-stage founders, the “we can’t find the right person” complaint usually traces back to a planning decision made months earlier. This article examines why hiring is the last place a strategy gap shows up, and what to ask before the search opens.
Candidates apply with AI and employers screen with AI — what Greenhouse’s CEO calls a doom loop. The judgment line is the point where hiring stops being pattern-matching at volume and becomes a verdict about a person. This article maps every funnel stage against that line: what to automate, what to keep human, and who should hold the pen.
