How to Know If You're Making a Good Hire

Would your best employee pass your interview process?

Think about the person you would be most worried about losing. What makes them valuable? Perhaps they spot problems early, make sound decisions with incomplete information, or get difficult work finished without leaving everyone else to pick up the pieces.

Now think back to what you could actually have known when they applied. Would your process have looked for evidence of those things? Or would their application have stalled over a missing qualification, an unfamiliar employer or an answer that lacked polish?

It is an uncomfortable question. It is also a useful place to start when you are deciding whether to hire someone else.

You cannot know for certain how a hire will work out. You can be much clearer about what supports your decision, what remains uncertain, and what your own business needs to provide for that person to succeed.

First, agree what you are hiring someone to achieve

“An experienced leader” is a description of a person. It does not tell you what needs to change after they join.

Before comparing candidates, agree the few outcomes that would make this a successful appointment. Make them specific enough to assess later, and realistic for the time and resources available.

For example, a team leader might need to reduce an overdue workload, establish a reliable way of prioritising incoming requests, and develop two people who can take responsibility without constant escalation. A commercial hire might need to build a qualified pipeline in a new market rather than immediately deliver revenue from an established customer base.

Those are different assignments. They call for different evidence.

Separate what someone must be able to do on arrival from what they can reasonably learn. A statutory credential or essential technical skill is a different requirement from familiarity with your particular internal system. Treating every preference as essential makes it harder to see which candidates could actually do the job.

Ask what the candidate personally contributed

A successful employer, product launch or growing department gives you context. It does not tell you which part the candidate delivered.

Take one relevant example and stay with it long enough to understand it:

• What was the starting situation?
• Which decisions were theirs?
• What did they do themselves, and what did other people do?
• What changed, and how did they know?
• What went wrong or remained unresolved?

Someone should be able to explain their contribution without pretending they achieved everything alone. Clear attribution is more useful than a bigger headline number.

Then examine the conditions. A person who delivered with an established team, strong brand and substantial budget may still be excellent in a smaller business. But that transfer is something to investigate. Ask which parts of their approach would still work with the resources you have, and which would need to change.

The relevant question is whether their capability transfers to your situation.

Let them work through a representative decision

If judgement matters in the role, create a fair opportunity to observe it.

Use a short, fictional or anonymised situation that resembles the work. For a team leader, that might be several competing requests, limited capacity and an approaching deadline. Ask what they would investigate, what they would prioritise, and what they would tell the people affected.

Decide beforehand what a strong response needs to demonstrate. Give candidates the same core information, comparable time and consistent assessment criteria. Allow relevant access adjustments. Avoid surprising one candidate with information others received in advance.

The US Office of Personnel Management describes structured interviews as using consistent questions and rating standards. Its guidance on work samples emphasises tasks that resemble the job and skills expected at entry. These are useful design principles; neither approach turns a hiring decision into a guarantee. [1] [2]

Keep the exercise proportionate. A brief discussion can be enough to explore a decision. If you need substantial candidate work, explain the scope and compensate it appropriately. Do not ask applicants to solve a live commercial problem for free or disclose confidential material from their current employer.

Pay attention to how they use information. Which assumptions do they check? Can they explain a trade-off? Do they recognise when a decision needs specialist input? Can they revise a view when the facts change?

A polished answer may demonstrate those things. A less polished answer may demonstrate them too. Assess the substance and the communication the job actually requires.

Replace impressions with questions you can answer

Interview feedback often arrives as a label. The hiring discussion becomes more useful when each label is translated into evidence or an unresolved question.

Ask interviewers to record their evidence and initial judgements before the group discussion. Where views differ, identify whether people saw different evidence or are applying different standards. Another interview only helps if it addresses a specific unanswered question.

Check whether you are offering the job they think they are accepting

The candidate is only one part of the decision.

If you expect someone to improve a team, what authority will they have to change priorities? If you expect growth, what resources are committed? If their success depends on another department, has that department agreed to help?

Be explicit about the difficult parts too. That includes unresolved decisions, missing capability, budget constraints and responsibilities that are still being negotiated.

A candidate may be willing and able to work through those conditions. They need to understand them before accepting. Ask them to explain their understanding of the first priorities, the constraints and the support available. Where your accounts differ, resolve the difference.

This is also a useful test of the role itself. If the hiring team cannot agree what the person can decide, or what success means, the brief still needs work.

Resolve the biggest remaining uncertainty

Before an offer, write down the most important reason the hire might not work.

Be specific. “There is always a risk” gives you nothing to act on. “We have not established whether they can prioritise effectively without the support team they currently have” gives you a clear question.

Choose the smallest useful way to address it. That might be a focused follow-up, a representative exercise, or a reference conversation arranged with the candidate's permission. A reference should explore relevant behaviour in context rather than simply ask whether someone was good to work with. Do not contact a current employer without the candidate's explicit agreement.

Some gaps will remain. Decide which are acceptable learning needs, what support they require and who will provide it. Do not disguise an unknown as a weakness, or average an unresolved essential requirement away because the candidate scored well elsewhere.

Before you make the offer

Bring the final discussion back to six questions. Use specific examples from the process, and name the person responsible for any follow-up:

• What must this person achieve, and by when?
• What did they personally do or demonstrate that supports each outcome?
• How comparable were the resources, authority and working conditions?
• Which essential requirement remains unproven?
• What further check or support would address that gap?
• What must the business provide, and who owns that commitment?

If the answer is missing, treat it as an open question. A unanimous panel is not a substitute for evidence, and a strong answer elsewhere does not resolve an essential gap.

What a defensible hiring decision sounds like

At the end of the process, the hiring team should be able to explain:

“We need this person to deliver these outcomes. This is the evidence that they can do it in our circumstances. These are the remaining uncertainties. This is what we will provide, and this is what we will check after they join.”

That is a stronger basis for an offer than “we all had a good feeling.”

Then use the agreed outcomes in onboarding and review. If progress is off track, examine the person's performance alongside the resources, decisions and support you committed to. You are testing the hiring judgement and the conditions behind it.

And return to that opening question occasionally. The point is not to hire copies of your best employee. It is to make sure your process can recognise the capabilities you actually value once someone is doing the work.

Sources and scope

This is a practical ProGen Search decision framework. It is not a validated test or an estimate of an individual candidate's likelihood of success. The examples are illustrative. These official resources inform the assessment-design guidance:

1. US Office of Personnel Management: Structured Interviews - consistent job-related questions and rating standards.
2. US Office of Personnel Management: Work Samples and Simulations - representative tasks and the relevance of competencies expected on entry.

Accessed 8 September 2026.