If You Stop Making Hiring Mistakes, Everyone Will Be in the Top Half

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To hire stronger people, you need to first need to stop making hiring mistakes.

Here's a claim that's obvious and almost universally ignored: if you eliminate candidates who will underperform or don’t fit, every person you subsequently hire will be above average.

That's not aspirational – it's just math. Stop hiring from the left side of the curve and you’ll only hire from the right.

We’ll be describing the "How of this" at our next “No More Hiring Mistakes!” webcast, but for now consider these points:

Three simple fixes can shift your entire hiring process to the right side of the curve.

Dumb mistakes are actually the most common source of hiring manager regret. While somewhat competent the person turned out to be a 90-day wonder – you wonder why you hired them before the probation period is over. These are the people who just don’t fit with the job, the team, the manager or the culture. The interview was typically rushed, and all of the guardrails were short-circuited. Everyone was desperate, including the candidate. A score below 50 on this hiring manager evaluation reveals a 90-day wonder waiting in the wings.

Common mistakes are subtler. These hires don't obviously fail – they just underperform quietly. They got hired because they interviewed well, had the right logos on their resume, or because the debrief was dominated by whoever spoke first or had the biggest thumb. Not disasters. Just below average, and they stay that way, no matter how much pushing or coaching you provide. These people just are not motivated to do the work required despite the fact they told you they were during the interview!

Too often we judge motivation to get the job as motivation to do the job. That’s a classic hiring mistake.

It’s obvious that if you eliminate both types of mistakes you’ll only be hiring from the right side of the curve. No exotic sourcing required. No employer brand overhaul. Just a process that catches both failure modes before they become your problem

Three Things That Prevent Left Side Hiring Mistakes

BIG FIX ONE: Define the job before defining the person.

Most job descriptions start by defining the skills, traits and responsibilities, not why you need to hire the person. Defining the “Why?” starts by asking this question, “What does the person need to do to be successful in this role?”

The result is a Performance-Based Job Description (PBJD) that defines 2–3 Key Performance Objectives (KPOs) and a 30, 60, and 90-day launch plan. Not duties. "Manage the sales team" is a duty. "Within 60 days, build a weekly pipeline review that gives each rep coaching on their lowest-converting stage" is a performance objective. A complete PBJD also describes the environment honestly: the pace, the manager’s style, how decisions get made, and the team dynamics.

BIG FIX TWO: A Structured Interview That Digs Into Accomplishments

Once you know what the job requires, you need evidence the candidate can deliver it in your environment. Paul Sackett's 2022 meta-analysis – the most comprehensive review of hiring validity in decades – is unambiguous: structured interviews significantly outperform unstructured ones, and work sample assessments are among the highest-validity tools available.

Structured interviews compare evidence. Unstructured interviews compare impressions, and impressions are where bias lives.

The most effective format asks candidates about their most significant accomplishments tied directly to the KPOs. Past behavior in comparable situations is the best predictor of future behavior. A good accomplishment interview also surfaces the fit signals – how someone describes working with their manager, handling ambiguity, or navigating a difficult team tells you exactly what you need to know about whether the 90-day wonder risk is real.

BIG FIX THREE: A Formal Debrief Where Interviewers Share Evidence, Not Impressions

This is the step most organizations skip, and where the most mistakes get made. People gather, share impressions, the most senior person speaks first, everyone anchors to that view, and the candidate who generated the best emotional response wins. This is what a mistake-prone interview looks like. Can you imagine not sharing this with your peers?

Sharing evidence reveals gaps in the interview process.

Sharing evidence is why a formal debrief is essential. Every interviewer submits written notes before anyone speaks. The discussion proceeds factor by factor – performance against each KPO, plus fit with the culture, team, and manager style – using a simple rubric.

Every score requires specific evidence. "I think she'd struggle with ambiguity" doesn't qualify. "She described three situations where she escalated instead of deciding, and each one added weeks to the outcome" does. That fit category is where the 90-day wonder gets caught – those signals belong in the scorecard, not in a private doubt someone takes home without sharing.

Check out this interactive Quality of Hire Scorecard to see the difference between mistakes and great hires. Use it to lead your next debriefing session and insist on at a 2.5 score on each factor. Expect some yelling. Once it subsides you'll see this tool as the key to preventing all future hiring mistakes.

The Fix Is In: No More Hiring Mistakes

First define the job as a series of key performance objectives. Next, conduct an evidence-based structured interview asking the candidate for examples of comparable accomplishments. Finally, share this evidence in a formal debrief and argue.

That’s all it takes to hire the top half. Every time.