Hiring is Development

The market will not perceive your company as ten different things, some of which are good and some of which are bad. Your company will either do good or bad in the market.

Your customers will not love your product for these four features, but hate it for those two. Your product will either be loved or hated.

Your team is not a group of individuals, some of whom are doing a good job and some of whom are doing a bad job. Your team will either do a good job or a bad job.

Therefore, you are not hiring. You are developing your team. You should not select the best candidate. You should select the candidate who will improve your team the most.

You’d think it boils down to the same thing, but it really doesn’t. More than once, I hired somebody who was neither the most skilled candidate nor the most experienced, but I did it anyway because I had a strong feeling that this particular person will improve the rest of us.