Hiring

The Hiring Rituals

The Hiring Rituals, provides a comprehensive guide to a deliberate, human-centered approach to hiring—a process designed to uncover not just what candidates can do, but why they can do it and who they are as people. It captures rituals that guide every stage, from initial outreach to post-hire integration, ensuring consistency, depth, and alignment with the company’s mission.

Section 1: The Philosophy of Hiring

“Hire them not for what they know, but for why they know it.” – CD

The essence of great hiring lies in uncovering motivation, curiosity, and resilience. Knowledge and skills are proxies for a deeper truth: the candidate’s capacity to learn, grow, and thrive in the face of challenges.

In hiring 10x-Engineers/top-contributors, it’s key to recognize what sets them apart. The hiring ritual starts by training the interviewers. Training them involves having well defined questions but also, perhaps more importantly, on how to ask those questions. The objective of an interview in the interview should NOT be to make a hire/no-hire decision. It’s widely accepted that people will use their intuition to make hiring decisions in the first minute or two of an interview. The role of an interviewer should understand how they interact and answer the questions asked. It should not be solely focused on whether they answered them correctly. They should know that the question of hire/no-hire will be discussed in the debrief once every interviewers’ experience has been heard.

Delaying the decision allows for something known as “delayed intuition” or “informed intuition.” Delaying the decision has been shown in studies to result in a much higher correlation to whether it turns out to be a good hire later on. See Delayed Intuition as discussed by Adam Grant and Daniel Kahneman which Kahneman (author of Thinking Fast and Slow) discusses more deeply in his great book Noise.

Leave the Comfort Zone

Take the candidate outside their comfort zone with structured questions. This allows various avenues and depths for the interviewer to go. You learn a great deal more than if you probe them for what knowledge they have. Candidates taken down a path beyond their existing knowledge need to collaborate with the interviewer. They need to first understand the problem and then explore possible solutions.

Do they ask enough questions to understand the problem? If you offer a suggestion, do they jump on it without considering its merits? If you ask them if they’re certain about a solution or path they’ve taken is finding one, do the stubbornly insist and continue? Basically, are they open to the possibility that they might be wrong and willing to explore other approaches?

People with fixed mindsets quickly stall or give up when you take them down this path. People with a growth mindset will derive energy from a new challenge. They’re able to grasp specifics of problems they’ve never seen before with a willingness to be vulnerable in potentially failing as they explore possible solutions. The final question is if they are drained because they weren’t able to come up with solutions based purely on their prior knowledge? Or, are they energized by collaborating and exploring solutions. To get ahead, you need to solve problems others haven’t solved and/or to solve them in ways others haven’t solved them before. Hence, hire those eager to explore the unknown and learn and discover than to hire someone who knows existing answers to existing problems.

Who the Candidates are as People

Consider again that it’s not about what they know but rather why they know it. Similarly, it’s not what they are capable of doing, but why they are capable of doing it. What they know and are able to do are proxies for their motivation to gain knowledge and get things done. So, ultimately, it’s about who they are. As such, it’s important that the very first company contact from a sourcer followed by the recruiter that should convey company culture if you want to attract the right candidates. The whole experience through to the close should be a consistent experience. I like to close out an interview with the following question.

“If you look back on your life (ideally your life outside of work), can you find one moment, one experience, one event that you’re willing to share that changed who you are and how you see and approach the world?” One reason to leave this question to the end is that it helps to have build up the trust and connection that you genuinely care who they are as a person. I’ve gotten some of the most amazing responses to this question. People have said they’ve never share what they were telling me with anyone else. They often share a tail that makes it clear that they have found a strong purpose in their life and a drive towards achieving something and having an impact.

Why Hiring Rigor Matters:

Consistency in Culture: Each hire shapes the collective behaviors and attitudes that define the organization.
Alignment with Mission: Candidates must align not just with what the company does but with why it does it.
Resilience in Ambiguity: Disruptive companies require individuals who can adapt, learn, and excel in uncharted territory.
Growth Mindsets Building Disruptive Tech: You may be limiting your business if you hire people because they are great with existing problems and solutions. You may not be hiring the people to disrupt by doing things that have never been done before or solving existing problems in ways they have never been solved before. The truly successful business as those that are disruptive, and the need for disruption is great in a world that is changing at an accelerating rate. You want to hire people that will grow and change with it, not be left in the past doing things the way they’ve always been done.

Section 2: Core Hiring Rituals

1. Consistent Messaging:

Every interaction—from the sourcer’s first email to the onboarding experience—must reflect the company’s values and mission.
This builds trust and ensures candidates understand what to expect and how they fit into the broader vision.

2. Designed Questions:

Questions should assess growth mindset, problem-solving ability, and hunger to learn. This is achieving by designing questions that while focused on one topic, allow and encourage the interviewer to push the complexity of the question such that it exceeds a candidate’s current set of experiences and knowledge.
The objective of these questions is not to assess a candidates knowledge or existing skills. It’s rather to assess how a candidate engineer would collaboratively solve a problem they haven’t seen before.
- Do they realize when they need to ask clarifying questions or for more details?
- If they start going down a rat-hole that doesn’t lead to success, will they hear the interview’s questions about whether this is the right path when their pride reminds them of their belief they are being assess for their knowledge?
- If alternatives are suggested, …
  - Do they immediately take up the interviewer’s suggestion?
    This is bad as it suggests a short-coming of independent thought and willingness to add value with their own thoughts and perspectives.
  - Do they stubbornly stick to their own solution?
    This is also bad and suggests they lack a growth mindset and/or a collaborative mindset.
  - Or, do they become curious to discuss the pros and cons of each solution?
    This is what we are looking for.

3. Qualify Your Interviewers:

Train: Train interviewers to on specifically designed questions that solve for the above.
Shadow: Implement a two-way shadowing process where interviewers are both observed and observe others.
Certify: Certify interviewers for specific questions to ensure they understand what to probe for and how with a specific question.
Manage: Create a matrix of interview questions for a certain role and people that are certified for each of those questions.

4. Delayed and Informed Intuition:

Quick decisions: Interviewers often make hire/no hire decisions in the first minute or first five minutes of an interview. They are relying on their instincts, which can be good. However, those instincts are more like snap judgements.
Adjustments: Avoid making immediate hire/no-hire decisions during interviews. This can be done by ensuring qualified interviewers understand the outcome of the interview that is desired from them is not a hire/no-hire decision, but rather and insightful report on how the candidate di on their assigned question.
The Debrief: Use the “debrief huddle” to synthesize insights and allow for informed intuition—a process where instincts are shaped by structured evaluation and team discussion. After every interviewer has reported out, everyone present now has a fulled context to base a decision on. I may trigger their intuition by going around the room and asking each one, if we hired this candidate and they started tomorrow and you were assigned as their dedicated mentor to work closely with them for the next three months – are you excited, or does that make you cringe? This line of questioning evokes what is know as delayed or informed intuition.
Why delayed intuition helps: I’ve had the experience of every interviewer thinking a candidate had excellent answers to every question, and yet when we went around the room, no one wanted to be their buddy or mentor. Double-clicks on whys in those situations have consistently revealed red-flags that had been overlooked at first.
Likewise, I’ve had candidates where every interviewer felt the candidate really struggled on every question. However, when I went around the room, everyone wanted to be their buddy and mentor. When asked why, they often saw an excitement, a humility, a curiosity and a tremendous hunger to learn and grow. With these candidates, I’ve had a few cases where I called them, told them they bombed every single question. I followed this by telling them however, that if they were willing to risk giving it a try, the team would be excited to help them succeed. The candidates like this that I’ve hired have been some of my best, most dedicated and fastest learning hires.

Section 3: Evaluating Candidates Holistically

Scoring Traits: Inspired by Daniel Kahneman’s research, break the interview process into key traits such as:

Work Ethic: Assess through examples of persistence and commitment.
Analytical Ability: Probe their capacity to break down complex problems.
Integrity: Use situational questions to evaluate honesty and decision-making.
Collaboration: Discover how well the candidate collaborated with the interviewer to truly understand the problem and then to arrive at the optimal solution.
Curiosity: Determine if the candidate is willing to explore new and different approaches to problems they struggle to solve at first.
Humility: Is the candidate willing to be humble and admit mistakes when embarking into unfamiliar territory?
Growth Mindset: Does the candidate demonstrate a mindset that they can and will arrive at a solution if they keep trying, or do they assume if they can’t, at first, solve the problem, that it lies beyond their abilities?

Score each trait independently before bringing the team together for collective discussion.

Leave the Comfort Zone: Take candidates beyond their knowledge base to assess:

How they approach unfamiliar challenges.
Their willingness to ask clarifying questions.
Their openness to exploring alternative solutions.

For example, if a candidate suggests a solution, follow up with: “Are you certain this approach is optimal? Why or why not?” This tests their ability to reflect and adapt.

One very telling thing can be achieved by at the end of the day, an HR person walks the candidate out and they ask – How do you think it went? Remember this candidate was just pushed beyond the limits of their experience and knowledge in every single interview. Hence, in none of the interviews did they solidly know the answer. Are they disappointed and dejected because they believe they failed? Or, are they energized and excited because they may be given opportunity to collaboratively learn how to solve problems they haven’t solved before? This distinction helps distinguish someone with a growth mindset from someone with a fixed mindset.

Who They Are as People: End interviews with deeply personal questions to understand candidates’ motivations and values. For instance:

“Can you share a moment from your life—outside of work—that fundamentally changed how you see the world?” This question often reveals purpose and character, fostering a deeper connection.

Section 4: Specialized Hiring Rituals

The Manager Close Ritual: This is a crucial moment for securing top talent. The hiring manager must:

Build trust and personal rapport.
Emphasize how the role aligns with the candidate’s values and goals.
Highlight the company’s commitment to growth, purpose, and support.

Example close: “Joining Nova isn’t just about the work you’ll do; it’s about the journey we’ll take together to grow, solve meaningful challenges, and create something extraordinary.”

Hiring Leaders: For leadership roles, consider “speed-dating interviews” consisting of:

Fifteen concise questions designed to assess leadership philosophy, problem-solving, and vision.
A debrief focused on both structured scoring and holistic impressions.
See: www.TalentWhisperers.com/15-Speed-Dating-Interview-Questions
P.S. ask/DM me for the password if it’s password protected (as it may be when I’m actively hiring for this role).

Hiring Product Managers: Assess the ability to bridge technical and customer needs. Rituals include:

Scenario exercises to test strategic thinking.
Collaborative problem-solving sessions to gauge alignment with engineering teams.

10x Engineer Rituals: When hiring exceptional engineers, focus on:

Grit and Curiosity: Look for candidates energized by solving novel problems.
Collaborative Problem-Solving: Test their ability to work with interviewers to tackle unfamiliar challenges.
Resilience: Evaluate how they handle failure and iterate on solutions.

Section 5: The Post-Interview Debrief Ritual

The Debrief Huddle: After all interviews are complete, gather the team to:

Share independent observations and scores for each trait.
Discuss discrepancies and align on key insights.
Use a “champion and veto” system, where any interviewer can veto a candidate, but a strong champion is required to move forward.

This ritual ensures that every decision is deliberate, collaborative, and aligned with the company’s values.

Section 6: Continuous Improvement

Hiring rituals are not static. As leasers, HR and teams learn, every hiring cycle is an opportunity to refine and improve. This is aided by

Feedback Loops: Post-hire reviews to assess the accuracy of the process and identify areas for improvement.
Ritual Evolution: Regular updates to interview questions and scoring rubrics to adapt to changing needs and lessons learned.

Closing Thoughts

Hiring is not just about filling roles; it’s about building a team that embodies the organization’s mission and values. The rituals described here are designed to ensure that every hire strengthens not just the team but a culture and resilience. By focusing on growth, curiosity, and alignment, leaders can create a process that delivered exceptional results.

Atomic Rituals