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Hiring for Leaders: Become a Better Interviewer

With 20+ years of expertise as a founder & executive search professional, I share actionable strategies, tools, and insights to make hiring your competitive advantage.

Featured Post

7 Interview Questions That Instantly Reveal Top Talent

Hi Reader, Great interviewers don't always make the best hire. I learned that the expensive way, across more than 12,000 interviews and over 1,000 hires. Here is the part that should stop you cold. A study that tracked 20,000 new hires found 46% failed within 18 months (and 82% of the managers admitted they saw the warning signs in the interview and hired anyway). So we rarely miss a thing. We just let our gut test for the wrong thing. We naturally reward storytelling. The candidate with the...

Hey Reader, 11,000 job applications per minute on LinkedIn. Up 45% in a single year. That growth didn't come from people deciding to polish their CVs. It came from AI tools applying on their behalf. And on the other side? AI is reading those applications, scoring them, ranking them. Both sides think they're winning. Neither is. I made a video breaking down the loop we've built, why it's failing everyone, and what actually works instead.Watch it here: Enjoy! Konstanty Thanks for reading! If...

Hi Reader, A manager in one of my clinics ran a full mock interview recently. The candidate answered every question confidently. → We built the platform. → We turned it around. → We hit the numbers. The manager nodded. Took notes. Scored it well. Afterwards, the person playing the candidate admitted it. In the real project the story was based on, he had essentially just been in the room. Every "we" was covering for it. And it worked. It got past an experienced manager completely. Here is the...

Hi Reader, Here is something that should make every business leader uncomfortable. The most consequential decisions in any company, who you hire, what they are there to do, and whether they can actually do it, are made almost entirely without training. No structured preparation. No framework. No evidence-based process. Just instinct, a gut feeling, and the hope that the person who interviewed well will perform well. According to SHRM research, supervisors spend an average of 17% of their...

Hi Reader, The most common opening question in interviews is "tell me about yourself." It sounds warm. It sounds open. And...it is one of the weakest questions you can ask. At best you get a polished story. At worst, a ten-minute walk through the CV you already read. Either way, you learn almost nothing about whether this person can actually do the job. Here is why it fails. It hands control to the candidate, rewards confidence over competence, and produces a performance instead of evidence....

Hi Reader, A few weeks ago I ran a session for a room full of founders. VC-backed, growing companies, serious people. I asked them to describe their experience of hiring in a word or a phrase. Here is what came back. "We completely messed this up." "It is a pain in the ass." "I never want to hire anyone again." "We are in a situation." These were not struggling businesses. They were well-run companies with smart leadership teams and real capital behind them. They felt this way because hiring...

Hi Reader, A couple of years ago I got a call from one of Germany's largest digital banks. The person I spoke to was not frustrated with their recruiters. Recruiters were doing their job. The problem was what happened after a candidate landed in front of a hiring manager. Every manager interviewed differently. Questions varied. Standards varied. One team ran tight, structured conversations. Another ran something closer to an informal chat over coffee. When decisions went wrong, nobody could...

Woman with finger to lips, signaling silence

Hey Reader, Right now, somewhere in your organisation, someone knows something important and isn't saying it. Maybe it's a customer who's about to leave. Maybe it's a product that isn't ready. Maybe it's a deal that doesn't make sense. They're staying quiet because your culture made silence feel safer than honesty. Most leaders never see it coming (until it's too late). I made a video this week on the six behaviours that separate teams that genuinely perform from teams that just look like...

Hi Reader, Most managers I know are good leaders. They care about their teams. They take hiring seriously. Yet, interviewing is one of those skills everyone is expected to have, but almost nobody is ever taught. So they rely on gut feel, polished stories, and "cultural fit" that feels right in the room but falls apart six months later. They accept summaries instead of evidence. Impressions instead of behavior. Hope instead of clarity. The result is predictable. Wrong hire. Missed targets. A...

Woman in glasses working on laptop at desk

Hi Reader, "Where do you see yourself in five years?" If you're still asking this question, you're sadly wasting your time. Here's why: Most interview questions that feel standard are just theatre. They test how well someone has rehearsed, not whether they can do the job. Why Your Questions Don't Work You ask "Tell me about a time you demonstrated leadership." The candidate delivers a polished three-act story. You nod. They move forward. What did you learn? That they can tell a story. Not...