Hire for the Bad Day
Most interview processes are optimized for charm. The cost of getting durability wrong is paid by everyone on the team the first time things get hard.
Interviews mostly select for how someone performs on a good day. The candidate is rested, prepared, and trying. That tells you almost nothing about who they'll be the first week the system fails them.
What to actually ask
- Tell me about a stretch where you were the person it wasn't fair to ask. What did you do on day three?
- Walk me through a time you held a standard that cost you socially on your team.
- When was the last time you were the slow one in the room? What did you do about it?
None of these are gotchas. They're just questions that are hard to answer if the underlying experience isn't there. The candidate who's actually lived the thing will sound boring and specific. The candidate who hasn't will sound like a TED talk.
The cost of getting it wrong
A wrong hire on a quiet team is recoverable. A wrong hire on a team that's about to be tested compounds — because the people next to them have to absorb the slack, and the people on the next rung quietly conclude that the standard isn't real.