Why Interviews Miss Key Candidate Skills

If a job applicant said "I have no idea how to grow your startup" would you hire them as your VP of Growth? (Because I probably would). Wait, hear me out… If there was an obvious way to grow your startup, you'd already have done it. If you haven’t, you're betting on your next hire to help figure it out. But candidates with the most confidence often, paradoxically, have the hardest time uncovering new ideas, thanks to the “illusion of knowledge bias.” 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗶𝗹𝗹𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗼𝗳 𝗸𝗻𝗼𝘄𝗹𝗲𝗱𝗴𝗲 𝗯𝗶𝗮𝘀 - Individuals mistakenly believe they possess a deeper understanding of a topic than they actually do. They overestimate their knowledge and fail to recognize the gaps in their understanding, leading to poor decision-making and an unwillingness to seek further information. Wait, it gets worse - Commitment & consistency bias If they claim to know the right strategy, they will become anchored to that approach, even if it's incorrect, thanks to the Commitment & Consistency bias. (That's the one that says: After we state a position, we’re far more likely to act in accordance with that belief, even if it’s incorrect, and less likely to consider alternatives.) What should you do instead? When interviewing candidates, focus less on how much they know, and more on how quickly they can figure things out. That starts the moment a candidate walks in the door. People are uncomfortable admitting “I don’t know” — especially in a job interview! So take a moment to create space for humility and candor in the conversation. Talk about your own mistakes and blind spots, and explain that you don’t expect people to have all the answers – only to figure them out. Then ask questions about their experience finding and applying new information, such as: 1. Tell me about a time when you were wrong about something? How did you find out? And what did you do as a result? 2. What’s something you learned recently from your customers or your data that surprised you? What did you do with that information? 3. Looking at our business, what things do we need to figure out before we can scale? And how do you suggest we bottom those things out? 4. Tell me about a time when you had to tell your boss they were wrong, how did that conversation go? These aren’t easy questions, give them time to think. As they’re answering, focus on what they say plus how they say it. Are they comfortable talking about surprises and unknowns? Simple next step Be honest with yourself, are you hiring a VP of “drive it like you stole it” or a VP of “figure out how to grow my business?” If you need someone to figure it out, hire with that explicit mandate, and ask the whole team to do everything they can to support the discovery process. By the way, this approach can also unlock thinking in your existing team. Helpful? Follow me for more Matt Lerner .

What’s the biggest challenge in recruiting right now? It’s not sourcing. It’s not volume. It’s not even alignment. It’s that the talent bar is higher than ever, and most interviewers haven’t been trained to assess against it. In Q1, I spoke with well over 50 Talent leaders, CEOs, hiring managers, and interviewers. And in nearly every conversation, the same two themes came up: “We have a very high talent bar.” “But our interviewers aren't skilled in interviewing.” The irony. 😵💫 It’s not that interviewers don’t care or aren’t capable. Most haven’t been taught how to assess consistently, or don’t interview often enough to build the skill. And most of the teams I spoke with don’t have ongoing support in place. It’s usually one training, and then interviewers are off to the races. Without structure or coaching, it’s easy to miss real signal. Meanwhile, candidates are expected to deliver crisp, strategic, high-impact answers under pressure, often in fast-paced conversations with unclear prompts and no follow-up. I’ve seen candidates passed on for being “too vague,” only to review the interview (thank you AI notetakers) and realize the question was layered, unclear, and never clarified. The candidate didn’t fail. The process did. So how do we actually fix this? Here’s what’s moved the needle for me: ✅ Get specific about what you’re hiring for Not just the title. What outcomes will this person need to deliver in 90 days? Six months? A year? Hire for the anniversary date, not just the start date. That’s the bar and interviewers need to be aligned on it. ✅ Assign focused areas to interviewers No more “everyone assess for strategic thinking.” Divide ownership. Go deep, not wide. This leads to stronger signal and better debriefs. ✅ Calibrate your scorecards Don’t just hand out a 1–4 scale and call it structured. Define what a 2 looks like. Define what makes someone a 4. Use real rubrics to make it objective. ✅ Coach with context, not just opinion Tools like BrightHire and Metaview can help you spot unclear questions, missed signal, and where interviewers need support. ✅ Use your ATS to scale interviewer readiness ATS's like Ashby makes this easy. You can track interviewer pools, assign shadows, and move people through training stages automatically. No spreadsheets. No guesswork. ✅ Debrief with evidence If the feedback is “not strong,” dig deeper. What did they say? What was missing? What would’ve made them a “strong hire”? Make sure your feedback reflects real signal, not just personal impression. Interviewing isn’t instinct. It’s a skill. One that needs to be continuously developed. And if we’re serious about hiring great talent, we have to enable the people responsible for identifying it. What are you doing this year to level up your interviewers? 👇🏼

Most hiring problems are not candidate problems. They are interviewer problems. Not because interviewers are careless. But because they were never trained to hire well. And yet we expect them to do all of this in real time: • Interview clearly • Read people accurately • Separate confidence from competence • Challenge their own assumptions • Make decisions with incomplete information That is not a basic task. That is judgement work. But in most companies, hiring is still treated like admin. Something managers should just figure out. So under pressure, they do what most people do: Trust instinct. Lean on first impressions. Confuse familiarity with fit. That does not make them bad decision-makers. It means the process is asking more of them than the company prepared them for. The gap: Most professionals are trained to do the job. Very few are trained to evaluate people for the job. Very few are taught how to interview well, assess evidence, spot bias before it becomes judgment, or align on standards across interviewers. So hiring ends up feeling heavier than it should. Not only because the decision matters. Because every interview asks someone to perform a skill they were never taught. Better hiring does not start with telling interviewers to "be better." It starts with giving them a better way to think. Clear standards. Shared language. Real training. Practice before live decisions. Reflection after them. Because great hiring is not instinct. It is trained judgement. And if you want better hiring outcomes, train the people making the hiring decisions. --- 📌 Want my practical frameworks for better interviewer training and hiring decisions? Join my newsletter: https://lnkd.in/enhfcXav --- ♻️ Repost this to help more teams treat interviewing like a skill, not an assumption. ➕ Follow Konstanty Sliwowski for more on hiring, leadership, and people.

Most recruiters obsess over resumes. I learned the hard way what really matters. I once placed what I believed was the perfect candidate: top-tier skills, cultural alignment, and great references. The hiring manager was excited, but just six weeks later, they requested a replacement. After 15 years in recruiting, I’ve learned that “perfect fits” can sometimes go wrong. Here are the warning signs I missed: 1. The candidate asked no questions about team dynamics. 2. They focused only on compensation, ignoring growth opportunities. 3. All references were former colleagues, not direct reports or managers. What went wrong: 1. Skills matched ✓ 2. Personality clashed with team culture ✗ 3. They expected an unplanned leadership role ✗ 4. Their work style was misaligned ✗ The reality is that while technical skills get you hired, it is soft skills and cultural alignment that determine success. Now, I ask every candidate: “Describe your ideal manager's communication style.” “How do you handle feedback?” “What does collaboration look like to you?” “Tell me about a time you disagreed with your team.” I also advise hiring managers to ask: → “What motivates you beyond money?” → “How do you prefer to receive direction?” → “What's your definition of work-life balance?” The biggest lesson I've learned? Resumes show what someone can do. Interviews reveal what they will do, but only time shows who they really are. Now, I focus 70% of my screening on behavioral questions and team dynamics, as skills can be taught, but attitude and fit are much harder to change. Fellow recruiters, what’s your biggest lesson learned about “perfect fits”? 👇 ♻️ Repost to share this with your network.

A Critical Evaluation of a Speculative Solution Creation Exercise. 🔵 The Unpaid Challenge: One of the most common and damaging issues with a design challenges is when they're unpaid. When we ask candidates to invest 6–10+ hours of their personal time producing speculative solutions, we are essentially asking them for free labor. Not everyone can afford to give away that much time, unpaid challenges reinforce privilege: they advantage those with fewer financial or family constraints, while unintentionally excluding working parents, caregivers, and those already balancing multiple roles. This is shortsighted. If we want to hire diverse, well-rounded designers who represent the communities our products serve, we cannot structure our process around uncompensated effort. 🔵 The Speed Test Fallacy: Fast ≠ Good A frequent issue is the bias toward speed. Candidates race to produce polished work in a short window to impress a hiring panel. The result is often hi-fidelity assumptions rather than carefully reasoned design. This fosters a dangerous dynamic: we start rewarding presentation shine and clever hacks rather than thoughtful inquiry, stakeholder alignment, or systemic thinking. That means we end up hiring designers who look fast and clever under pressure rather than the ones who excel at navigating ambiguity, asking the right questions, and collaborating across functions. It is the design equivalent of hiring a surgeon because they stitched something up quickly, without checking whether they addressed the underlying diagnosis. 🔵 The Quality Trap: Why Rushed Work Misleads Evaluators When work is rushed, we often confuse polish with competence. Candidates who happen to be adept at rapid prototyping or visual design may look stronger than those who are methodical researchers or strategists, yet in practice, both skill sets are critical. By removing time for discovery and reflection, the challenge becomes a test of production stamina, not design judgment. So hiring managers risk missing out on the very candidates who could strengthen their teams: deep thinkers, the empathetic interviewers, the ones who ask, What problem are we solving and why, instead of just designing a solution. 🔵 A Better Model: From Output to Process The most effective design exercises are contextual, transparent, and respectful. Strong alternatives include: 🔶 Portfolio Deep Dives: Walk candidates through past work, then ask how they would adapt their approach to your domain. 🔶Case Conversations: Provide real (sanitized) artifacts and constraints. Ask candidates what questions they would ask, how they would frame the problem, and what discovery paths they would pursue. 🔶Collaborative Workshops: Run a 45–60 minute facilitated working session with the hiring team so you see how candidates collaborate, not just what they produce alone. 🔶Paid Take-Homes: If a practical exercise is needed, scope it tightly (2–3 hours max) and pay candidates for their time. #Hiring

Happy Saturday! Vulnerable and personal post! This is a post on a topic that I, and maybe many others struggle...Performance Based Interviews! I am a "High Performer" who experiences interview anxiety! I went to the evidence and this is what I learned! Performance based interview questions work. But they also miss great candidates. Behavior based, structured interviews have strong evidence behind them for predicting job performance. Done right, they increase consistency, reduce noise, and align decisions to job relevant behaviors. Here’s the uncomfortable part. Interviews can still produce false negatives. A high performer can score poorly because the interview is also a test of real time storytelling, self marketing, and social ease. Research shows interview anxiety can meaningfully lower interview performance ratings. That means your organization's process can reject capability, not because the person cannot do the job, but because they did not “perform” in the interview moment. This is where smart hiring teams can (and should) evolve the model. What to do instead: ✔️ Make the interview one input, not the whole decision. ✔️ Add work samples or job simulations scored with a rubric. ✔️ Use structured situational judgment tests for roles heavy on prioritization and judgment. ✔️ Run structured reference checks mapped to the same competencies. Offer reasonable interview accommodations by default, such as questions in writing, brief prep time, and less reliance on “polish” cues. If you want the best candidate, stop using a single conversation as your primary measurement tool. Build a selection system that tests capability directly and protects against missing talent. Is it time for the interview process to evolve to current evidence-based practices? Feedback and insights from HR SMEs and Leaders welcome! #RepresentationMatters #Hiring #TalentAcquisition #Leadership #HR #Selection #DEI #EvidenceBasedManagement

We say we want certain skills. We even write them into job descriptions. Then… we barely test for them in interviews. I just read this great Harvard Business Review piece that shows a troubling gap: technical and experience-based skills—the very ones that often decide success—are meaningfully assessed in only around half of hiring processes. And in the AI era, the gap is even more shocking: just 2.2% of interviews in 2025 explicitly asked about AI skills. In my own experience, I’ve seen how interviewers often circle back to the same topics, yet they leave huge blind spots. What that means is that we are too often rejecting top talent or hiring the wrong person simply because no one asked the right questions. The fix isn’t more interviews though. It’s intentional ones. For example, assign topics by round, use interview guides that force coverage of every critical skill, and train interviewers to dig deep once, not shallow three times. We don’t need more interviews. We need better ones. #RecruitmentStrategy #HiringExcellence #FutureOfWork #TalentLeadership https://lnkd.in/eVsdNvNZ

BrightHire and Harvard Business School analyzed 23,000 interviews across 44 companies… and found most multi-round processes circle the same skills, locking into consensus instead of uncovering capability. That’s how critical, future-facing skills go untested, and how AI readiness stays invisible in 93% of interviews. When a skill isn’t explicitly covered, it often only surfaces if a candidate brings it up… meaning key strengths can be missed, shaping decisions on incomplete information. Some answers won’t surface in the feed. 🎥 The next frame is in the video.

After interviewing 40+ Data Engineer Interns and New Grads at Amazon, I noticed the same three mistakes happening over and over... Not because candidates lacked technical skills. But because they forgot that interviews are conversations, not exams. Here's the thing: We both get the same 60 minutes. You're there to exhibit your skills. I'm there to capture and evaluate them. But if you don't show me your thinking, I can't capture what I can't see. The top 3 mistakes that make those 60 minutes harder for both of us: Mistake 1: Solving Problems in Your Head 🤐 I watch brilliant candidates work silently for 10 minutes, then present a solution. The problem? I have no idea how they got there. I can't evaluate what I can't see. 𝘙𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘮𝘣𝘦𝘳: Problem-solving in interviews isn't about solving the problem – it's about showing HOW you solve problems. ✅ Fix: Think out loud. Say "I'm considering two approaches..." or "Let me walk through my logic..." Help me follow your journey, not just see the destination. Mistake 2: Diving Straight Into Code 💻 "Given a data pipeline problem..." Candidate immediately starts writing SQL..... Wait. What about the data volume? Format? Update frequency? Error tolerance? I can't assess if your solution fits if I don't know what problem you think you're solving. ✅ Fix: Start with questions and assumptions. "Can I assume the data is in JSON format?" "What's our daily volume?" "Is this real-time or batch?" This helps me understand your context-driven thinking. Mistake 3: Treating Assumptions as Weaknesses 🚫 Candidates hesitate to state assumptions, worried it shows gaps. Actually, it's the opposite – it shows maturity. ✅ Fix: Lay out your assumptions clearly. "I'm assuming we have 100GB daily data, so I'll design for distributed processing." This helps me evaluate your reasoning, not just your answer. The Secret? One of the best Data Engineers I ever hired didn't solve every problem perfectly. But she: - 𝘕𝘢𝘳𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘤𝘦𝘴𝘴 (𝘩𝘦𝘭𝘱𝘦𝘥 𝘮𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘭𝘭𝘰𝘸 𝘢𝘭𝘰𝘯𝘨) - 𝘈𝘴𝘬𝘦𝘥 𝘤𝘭𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘧𝘺𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘲𝘶𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 (𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘸𝘦𝘥 𝘴𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘬𝘴 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘹𝘵) - 𝘚𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘤𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘳 𝘢𝘴𝘴𝘶𝘮𝘱𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 (𝘭𝘦𝘵 𝘮𝘦 𝘦𝘷𝘢𝘭𝘶𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘰𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨) - 𝘈𝘥𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘐 𝘢𝘥𝘥𝘦𝘥 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘴 (𝘥𝘦𝘮𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘢𝘥𝘢𝘱𝘵𝘢𝘣𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘺) She made my job easy. I could clearly see how she thinks. 𝘙𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘮𝘣𝘦𝘳: We're not looking for robots who compute answers. We're looking for future colleagues who can communicate, collaborate, and adapt. Help us see that in those 60 minutes. Share this with someone preparing for DE interviews #DataEngineering #AmazonJobs #EngineeringInterns #InterviewPrep

I had a candidate spend three hours interviewing over two days. And the only feedback they received was It did not go well. We are passing. Here is the part most hiring teams miss.  • This candidate rearranged their schedule.  • Took time off work.  • Studied for the role.  • Showed up prepared and hopeful. 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗱 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗮 𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴𝗹𝗲 𝘀𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲. From my side as the agency partner, that silence creates its own problem.  • I cannot fix what I cannot see.  • I cannot adjust the search.  • I cannot help the hiring team recalibrate.  • And I cannot help the candidate get better for future interviews. A big part of my role is preparing people so they walk into the next interview stronger than the last. But without real feedback, I cannot guide them on what to improve.  • No insight into technical gaps.  • No clarity on soft skills.  • No understanding of cultural alignment.  • Nothing that helps anyone move forward. The result is predictable. The candidate leaves discouraged. The employer brand weakens. And the hiring process keeps repeating the same mistakes. Feedback is not criticism. Feedback is direction. If a candidate gives you hours, how much direction do you give them in return? #CandidateExperience #Recruiting #EmployerBrand #TechHiring