In interviewing, like in many other subjective measurements an important trade off is precision (percentage of hires that worked out) vs recall (good hires that

In interviewing, like in many other subjective measurements an important trade off is precision (percentage of hires that worked out) vs recall (good hires that got rejected). Experienced interviewers, or an innovative process can optimize both values, but I do not believe one can reach perfection. In fact, I don’t think most companies are even anywhere close to optimums in either of those values. Yet what’s rarely considered during interviewing is which of the two values the organization should optimize for. An early stage startup, hiring a senior engineer may choose to optimize for precision. A mature organization that needs to hire quickly to start a new initiative may choose to minimize recall. Another way to put it - hiring is risky. The amount of risk you are willing to take should depend on circumstances and your ability to absorb failures.