The Hardest Call in Tech Leadership Isn’t When to Hire — It’s Who

Most challenges in technology come down to people. The tools and processes change, but results still depend on who’s in the room.

That’s why the hardest call in tech leadership isn’t when to hire — it’s who.

Most leaders learn hiring by experience. It’s rarely taught as a discipline, yet it shapes delivery speed, quality, and how much time you spend managing problems that could have been avoided. Instinct plays a part, but it’s not enough.

Hiring needs structure and evidence.

Start with outcomes, not CVs

Before reading any CV, define what success in the role means. Write down no more than five outcomes the person must deliver in the next 6–12 months.

Each outcome should link directly to a business goal. For example:

• Shorten response times to service issues.

• Increase release frequency without raising error rates.

• Improve visibility of performance across systems.

  
  

Those outcomes form the brief. Every question, test, and reference should relate to them. If a candidate can’t deliver those results, their credentials are irrelevant.

Test skills and behaviour, not presentation

Interviews often reward confidence over competence. You learn little about how someone will perform once the job begins.

Structured skills testing fixes that. Use practical, role-relevant assessments that show how candidates solve problems and make decisions. Combine these with short behavioural assessments that reveal work style, communication habits, and likely team impact.

The goal isn’t to find the loudest personality — it’s to see how each person performs under the same, fair conditions. This gives you objective evidence before the interview even starts.

Define your standards early

Every team has expectations that shape how work gets done. Write them down before you hire.

Examples:

• Takes ownership of outcomes.

• Follows through on incidents.

• Uses evidence to support decisions.

Use behavioural testing to confirm these traits rather than guessing them from a conversation. If a candidate doesn’t align with your team’s standards, don’t proceed — even if their technical ability is strong.

Skills can be developed; mindset usually can’t.

Reduce bias and guesswork

Even experienced leaders fall into predictable traps: hiring people who feel familiar, overvaluing interviews, or looking for “unicorns.” Structure helps reduce those biases.

• Use consistent questions across interviews.

• Assign clear roles to each interviewer — one leads, one probes, one challenges assumptions.

• Score candidates independently before the debrief.

• Compare what the team needs with what each candidate adds, not who feels easiest to manage.

  
  

This approach doesn’t remove human bias, but it makes it visible and controllable.

Learn from every hire

Hiring improves only when decisions are reviewed. Keep a simple record of why you chose each candidate and revisit it after six months.

• Did they deliver the outcomes?

• Which assessment results matched real performance?

• What did you misread?

These reviews take little time but build better judgement with each cycle.

Conclusion

Hiring defines a team’s capability more than any tool or process. Yet most leaders still approach it with less structure than they’d apply to a routine project decision.

Clear outcomes, skills testing, behavioural insight, and regular review create a repeatable system for making confident choices. It’s not about replacing human judgement — it’s about supporting it with evidence.

When you hire this way, the uncertainty drops. You make decisions faster, teams settle quicker, and delivery improves.

We give hiring managers a starting point grounded in real data about capability and fit, not subjective impressions. If you’re hiring and want to see how data-led shortlisting actually works, we’d be happy to walk you through it.