Hiring
5 cards · 35 min
A bad hire at a 30-person company isn't a minor setback. It's six months of damage you'll never get back (and spend the next year cleaning up).
- Most founders underinvest in hiring preparedness by a factor of 10x.
- They write a generic job description, post it, and start interviewing — then wonder why the hires they make bounce out in under a year.
- These cards are the preparation most founders skip but have to follow when you actually need, find people who aren't looking, and evaluate them with rigor.
The Cards
IThe MOC
The single best tool for defining a role before you hire for it, and for managing against that definition long after the offer letter is signed. One document that drives your interviews, onboarding, evaluations, and firing decisions.
- II
Competency Layers
Three layers of competency go into every hire: role-specific, level-specific, and company-wide. Most founders only articulate the first.
- III
Values
- IV
The Calibration Call
The calibration call is the core method within The Learning Playbook. Find someone exceptional at the thing you need to learn, and ask: "Who's the best at this that you've ever worked with or seen?" Then get the introduction. Your goal is to learn what great looks like before you try to hire for it or do it yourself.
- VII
Employment: The Product
The best candidates in the world are already well paid, appreciated, and probably happy. To hire them, you have to think about employment at your company the way you think about your product: features, benefits, competitive positioning, and a roadmap. Founders already think this way about what they're building for customers — Employment: The Product applies the same muscle to what they're building for talent.
For Your Team
This pack works best as a team exercise. Have each person read the cards before your next meeting. When you gather, pick one or two frameworks to discuss: What resonated? What’s already happening (or not) on our team? Then choose one thing to operationalize this week.
Discussion Prompts
- Think about the last role you hired for. Did you have a written MOC before you started interviewing? If not, what were you actually evaluating candidates against?
- How do you currently distinguish between role-specific competencies and company-wide values when interviewing? Are those layers explicit or implicit?
- What's your process for figuring out what 'great' looks like in a role you've never hired for before?
- When was the last time you used a structured interview scorecard? What happened when you didn't?
- Are you hiring reactively (filling a gap) or proactively (building toward a plan)? How would you know the difference?
- Think about your best hire. What did you do differently in that process compared to your worst hire?
- If you handed your interview process to a new hiring manager tomorrow, could they run it without you? What's missing?