The Two Classic Hiring Errors (and Why "Hire for Growth" Beats "Hire for the Job Description")
Every hiring mistake boils down to one of two classic errors.
Error one: hiring the wrong person because they interviewed well. Confidence, polish, a well-rehearsed story, these predict almost nothing about job performance, but they're what most interviews measure. You end up with someone who's great in a room but may struggle in the role.
Error two: passing on exceptional talent because they didn't look right on paper. The candidate without the "right" degree, the one with a gap, the one whose title doesn't match your keyword filter exactly, gets filtered out before a human ever reads their actual story. This is the more expensive mistake, because you never even find out what you missed.
Lou Adler's research points to the same root cause for both: hiring processes built around resume claims and interview impressions instead of documented evidence. Impressions and keywords are fast. They're just not accurate. ("Worse, there were so many false negatives, good people being excluded, and false positives, weak people being considered, that the [current] tests shouldn't be used for screening.")
There's a third piece that compounds both errors: most companies recruit the job posting, not the job. High performers aren't evaluating you on title and a bullet-point list of duties. They're asking whether this role represents a real career-defining challenge, meaningful scope, and visible impact, enough of a stretch to be worth the move. Adler calls this the "30% Solution": people change jobs for a combination of larger scope, faster growth, and real challenge, not comp alone.
That means the fix for both classic errors is the same fix: define the real work first. What does this person actually need to accomplish, and what's the real problem they'll be handed in month one? Recruit and screen against that, not a generic, cookie-cutter job description. Do that, and you naturally interview for evidence instead of polish (fixing error one) and evaluate comparable accomplishments instead of keyword matches (fixing error two), while giving strong candidates something real to say yes to.