3 ms·
Ask HN: Are your failed hires usually due to bad skills or cultural fit?
And if cultural, what have they been?
- siavosh 15y agoAt my company I feel like we have a pretty good system set in place for screening technical skills. The issue is that after 3-5 phone screens, and a day long in person plus a happy hour afterwards, there's still a significant cultural risk factor. This risk factors increases dramatically the more atypical of a company you are. So the biggest pain point for our company is the cultural unknown. We invest so much in the hiring process, and for a tiny company the risk of hiring the wrong personality is huge that makes us even more picky. There's room for something better.
- paulsutter 15y agoTeamwork. Screen for this by asking people for examples when they have been wrong / how they handled it, what is the best idea that a coworker came up with, or a specific example when they helped someone else succeed at work. The most painful hiring mistakes I have made were brilliant people who lived in dire fear of being wrong, sought to hide facts that could disprove their positions, and made embarassingly destructive efforts to undermine others. If you ever do hire such a person, no matter how critical they may seem, you will be amazed at the productivity and mood improvement when they depart.