Hiring

Hiring

You run the selection funnel up to the hire decision: write the post, screen the pile, structure the loop, and score candidates so the call is evidence-based and defensible. The product of this skill is a job post, a set of screen decisions, an interview structure, and a scorecard that says Hire / On-Hold / No-Hire with the reason written down.

Hard boundary: the moment the offer is accepted, you are done. Onboarding, payroll, equipment, performance reviews, PTO — that is ../people-ops/SKILL.md. Do not draft offer-letter terms here either; that is ../contracts/SKILL.md.

The funnel (the spine)

Every engagement walks this line, in order. Do not skip to scoring before the rubric exists.

define role → write post → screen pile → structured loop → independent scores → calibrated debrief → decision

One rule per stage, with the why:

• Define the role first. You cannot screen against criteria you have not named. Write the 3–6 competencies before the post, because they drive the post, the questions, and the scorecard.
• Write the post from the competencies. A post is the competencies turned outward, not a wish list.
• Screen against one rubric. Same criteria, same order, every candidate, or the comparison is meaningless.
• Run a structured loop. Same questions, same rubric, every candidate — structured interviews are the single highest-validity selection method (~.51 predictive validity vs ~.38 unstructured; the 2022 Sackett et al. re-analysis ranks them above cognitive-ability tests). Unstructured = lottery.
• Score independently, then calibrate. Each interviewer submits before the group talks. Debrief is calibration, not a re-vote.

Write the job post

The job post is the top of the funnel and it leaks candidates if you write it wrong. Apply the company voice from ../brand-voice/SKILL.md if one exists — but do not author the voice guide here, just apply it.

Split must-haves from nice-to-haves, and keep must-haves short. Women tend to apply only when they meet ~100% of listed requirements vs ~60% for men, so every extra "requirement" silently filters out qualified candidates. Cap must-haves at ~6. Everything that is genuinely learnable on the job goes under nice-to-have.

Ban gender-coded language. Removing gender-coded terms yields roughly 29% more applications. Masculine-coded words skew the applicant pool male. Strip and replace:

• Drop: rockstar, ninja, dominant, aggressive, fearless, ambitious, competitive, driven, strong, crush it.
• Prefer: collaborate, support, partner, build, responsible, dependable, share.

Full do/don't word list and a fill-in post skeleton: references/templates.md.

State pay. Pay transparency is law in a growing number of jurisdictions and a range widens the pool. Put a band in the post.

Bad → Good, same role:

BAD
We need a rockstar engineer — a fearless, aggressive self-starter who can crush
ambiguous problems. Requirements: 8+ years, CS degree from a top school, expert
in 11 named technologies, startup experience, must thrive under pressure.

GOOD
Senior Backend Engineer · €70–90k · Barcelona / remote-EU
You'll own our payments service end to end and partner with product on the
roadmap.
Must-haves (≤6): 5+ yrs building production backend services; fluent in one of
Go/Python/Java; designed and run a service in production; comfortable with SQL.
Nice-to-haves: payments domain, Kafka, prior on-call.
How to apply: send a short note + anything you've shipped.

Screen the pile

Score every applicant against the same job-related rubric you derived from the competencies (template: references/templates.md). No bespoke criteria per candidate.

• Blind to non-job factors. School prestige, name, age, employment gaps, photo — none of it is in the rubric, so it does not enter the decision.
• Work samples beat résumés. Skills-based signals (a structured task, a code sample, a portfolio teardown) predict performance better than résumé history;

  73% of companies now report a skills-based approach. When a must-have is unclear, resolve it with a small work-sample, not a guess.

• Defer criminal history. Fair-chance / "ban-the-box" laws in 37+ states and 150+ US cities require deferring criminal-history questions until after a conditional offer, plus an individualized assessment. Do not put a criminal-history box on the application form. (Candidate-data retention and consent: ../gdpr-privacy/SKILL.md.)

For each candidate, the call:

Structure the interview loop

Turn the 3–6 competencies into a loop where each interviewer owns distinct ground.

1. Map competencies to stages. Each competency gets a clear owner. If four people will all ask "tell me about a hard project", you have a duplicate- coverage bug — split the competencies so each stage probes something the others do not.
2. Build a structured question bank. Behavioral / STAR + work-sample, tied to each competency, asked in the same order for every candidate. Sample inline; full bank in references/templates.md.
3. Calibrate before kickoff. Run a 15-minute session on what a "5" vs a "3" means on the scale before anyone interviews, so scores are comparable.

Sample structured question (problem-solving, behavioral/STAR):

"Walk me through the hardest technical tradeoff you owned in the last year."
Follow-ups (STAR): What was the situation? What were YOUR options and the one
you picked? What did you actually do? What was the measured result, and what
would you change?