Is hiring too slowly by overthinking fit, or hiring too fast, the more common and costlier mistake?

Sri Batchu · Jul 26, 2023

Hiring slow with a very high bar is correct even in a startup where speed matters, because teams get materially slower as they get bigger

There are dis-economies of scale for teams — like a resource curse: with too many resources you get bad at prioritizing and accountability and move slower, so although some things won't get done, the right things get done better on small teams

Scope: accepts short-term cost of things not getting done; acknowledges he gets feedback that he hires too slowly

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Jean-Michel Lemieux · Mar 20, 2024

Founders hire product and engineering people too quickly; you should wait until things break a few times before adding headcount

Hiring fast means you never learn what your team's actual capacity is

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AJ Tennant · Oct 23, 2024

His biggest hiring mistake was moving too fast — skipping full reference checks, ignoring flags and skipping back-channeling under pressure to fill roles

Speed through the process is what produces bad hires

47:30 20Sales: Biggest Lessons Scaling Slack from $6M to $1BN in ARR | How to Build a Customer Success Machine and Where Most Go Wrong | The Framework to Hire All Sales Reps: Take-Home Assignments, Hiring Panels and more with AJ Tennant @ Glean

Harry Stebbings · Oct 23, 2024

Leaders should be willing to let fires burn and wait an extra month rather than make a fast hire

As painful as it is, waiting is better than hiring the wrong person

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AJ Tennant · Oct 23, 2024

It is worth taking an extra two to four weeks to get the right hire

Moving fast on one AE led to having to let them go, which turned into drama and a nightmare to manage

48:08 20Sales: Biggest Lessons Scaling Slack from $6M to $1BN in ARR | How to Build a Customer Success Machine and Where Most Go Wrong | The Framework to Hire All Sales Reps: Take-Home Assignments, Hiring Panels and more with AJ Tennant @ Glean

Harry Stebbings · Nov 15, 2024 · hedged

Hiring too fast is the more common mistake, and it is often better to wait for the perfect person

Most guests on the show report having hired too fast and wishing they had let fires burn instead

Scope: acknowledges it's a trade-off

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Nick Huber · Aug 21, 2023

Hire fast and fire fast rather than screening with long interview processes, top grading and personality tests

He tried rigorous screening and still made bad hires; the only reliable way he can assess someone is to get them working and give them progressively more trust

Scope: stated as true of himself — he concedes some people can judge a candidate in a 10-round interview

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Raman Malik · Nov 15, 2024

Being slow to hire is his own mistake — you can overthink team fit, and he is trying to move faster and take more risks on hires

Finding someone who will slot into a high-mutual-respect team is genuinely hard, but that difficulty tips into overthinking

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Miki Kuusi · Nov 28, 2022

'Hire fast, fire fast' is the wrong approach; hiring should be treated as a mutual commitment, and parting ways with someone is a failure of the company

You hire because you want to commit to someone and have them commit to you; a company that plans to hire ten and fire half shows a low level of trustworthiness and integrity, and people will only work their asses off for a company that will stand by them when they fumble — it has to be a two-way street

37:25 Hire fast fire fast is wrong hiring should be mutual commitment