Hiring
7 cards · 49 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: how to define what 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
How to define the company-wide layer of competencies that every hire must share, and how to use them as a working tool for hiring, evaluating, and building a team you'll remember for the rest of your life.
- IV
The Calibration Call
How to learn what great looks like for a role you don't fully understand yet. Two navigation questions, three groups to talk to, and the one questioning technique that gets you honest answers.
- V
Post and Pray
Names the passive recruiting trap and shows where founders slide back into posting-and-hoping at every stage of the funnel.
- VI
The Four Gates
Why structured interviews outperform every other hiring method, and the four gates that turn your MOC into an evaluation process your whole team can run.
- VII
The Other Product
The mindset shift that makes every other hiring card work. Employment at your company is a product. Build it, improve it, and sell it like one.
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?
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