What hiring mistakes do you wish you never made?
Have you ever regretted a hiring decision? How did you know they were a "bad" hire? Maybe you brought someone on full-time, part-time, or freelance, and things just didn’t work out. That happened to me in a non-technical role. I believed hiring someone for marketing and public relations would boost sales, help grow the team, and build our brand. Instead, I ended up with someone who seemed perfect on paper but couldn’t execute, which cost me more in both wages and lost revenue.
What I learned is that you need different questions to really understand someone’s skills and experience. When I switched from asking traditional or situational questions to using behavioral interview questions, I made better hires.
Most founders have had someone on their team who didn’t work out. What was yours? And how did you course correct?
Replies
Jasmine, good to see you back. The "perfect on paper but couldn't execute" pattern is brutal because interviews reward articulation, not follow-through, and you can't see that gap until real deadlines hit. Running two businesses like you are, I'd guess a bad hire costs you twice, you lose the output and you lose the attention you had to spend managing them instead of whichever venture actually needed you that week. Do you have a way to catch someone quietly underperforming in the first few weeks, or does it usually only surface once something urgent exposes it?