
Ask HN: Are your failed hires usually due to bad skills or cultural fit? - siavosh
And if cultural, what have they been?
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paulsutter
Teamwork.

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.

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siavosh
At 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.

