Founder Fundamentals 8/10 – Hiring well

Hiring well is a core capability for any growth company. Yet most processes are too vague about what they're actually testing for.

Four things determine whether you get what you need: Mandate. Experience. Seniority. Potential.

Each answers a different question.

Mandate asks: What role do we need them to play?

This is the first question you need to ask because it determines the rest of the process. Yet it is often skipped.

There are only three possible answers:

A puzzle-piece fits into the system you already have. They take the shape of the gap. They make the existing machine run with a little more output. If they are a good fit for the team they are hired into, they are easy to onboard and integrate.

A catalyst accelerates the system. They don't change what you do, but raise the bar around them. This can disturb a running system and cause friction with an existing team, so more effort needs to be made onboarding and integrating them. They do not need to fit well with the existing team they are hired into, but they need to fit with the values of the existing organisation.

A disruptor breaks the system open. They are hired to change how things work, not to operate them. They will create friction on purpose. Hiring them requires managing their integration with great care and attention. They don't need to fit with anything that exists. They need to fit with the goal of their hire. But they do need basic human decency, or the disruption falls on dry ground.

All three are valid hires. None is automatically better. But hiring a disruptor when you needed a puzzle-piece is how you blow up a functioning team. Hiring a puzzle-piece when you needed a disruptor is how you stay stuck and wonder why the senior hire didn't move the needle. Decide which one you need - don’t be vague and don’t mix the roles. It weakens the process substantially.

Experience is role-dependent — and the role depends on the mandate.

If you look for a catalyst or disruptor, you need to be very specific about what the one most important experience of the hire is. Look for superpower here at the expense of any and all secondary priorities. If you're hiring a puzzle-piece, you can be more generous — or even look for a balanced profile.

You also need to ask yourself: how big is the experience gap from what we're planning to hire to what we have? This matters because the bigger the gap, the more time and effort it takes to close. Until it closes, the hire isn't fully effective — and if they didn't know what they were walking into, they get frustrated.

Be open and be patient. I have seen too many "prophet hires" turn sour because the expectations were unrealistic from the start.

Seniority is often mistaken for speed.

Most founders hire senior because they want output from day one. That's not what seniority gives you.

What you get is a formed piece. Someone with a strong tendency to do things the way they did them before — not the way you do them here. That can be exactly what you need, particularly if you want a disruptor. It is not automatically faster. For a puzzle piece, even for a catalyst, a more junior candidate can sometimes be effective in less time.

Seniority pays off in a different currency: they require less management, more leadership from you. You spend less of your own time steering, and you get someone who can hold a room, set direction, and absorb ambiguity without escalating it back to you. But the trade-off is less malleability. Hence, you need more diligence in choosing the hire. The signals are slower, the cost of a mistake is higher, and the unwinding is harder.

Hire senior only if you need to.

Potential is the only dimension that asks about the future — and is rarely given enough attention.

Potential requires you to think about the org you'll be in three years. Five, if you’re looking to fill a leadership role or the role you’re hiring for could become one.

You don't need a detailed plan of what that will look like. But you need an idea of the shape of things to come before you write the job specs. How big will the team be? What will the span of leadership look like? What will this person need to carry by then? Sometimes roles change with time. A financial role may need to grow into fundraising and IR. A technical lead may need to become more of an architect and org builder. Is that the case here?

Then ask yourself: Am I confident that the candidate sitting in front of me has the headroom to grow into that? You will not know with certainty, but if you don’t feel excited about the journey you are about to take with this person, don’t hire them.

Founder hires have to be made for the org you're becoming. The earlier the stage you’re in, the more important potential is.