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Hiring Patterns

Hire people who will thrive on your team.

Methods for hiring well in small and growing teams, from deciding whether you need someone to a signed offer and first-week handover. For founders, hiring managers and interviewers, the cards cover defining the role, reaching people who are not job-hunting, screening fairly, interviewing for evidence rather than impressions, deciding on that evidence and giving candidates an experience worth recommending.

48 cards · 6 suits · 5 recipes · 5 missions

What's inside

• Define8Is it clear who you need to hire?
• Find8Are you reaching people who aren't looking?
• Screen8Can you narrow the list fairly and fast?
• Interview8Are your interviews gathering evidence, not impressions?
• Decide8Have you made the call on evidence?
• Experience and Improve8Would candidates want to join, whatever the outcome?

A few cards

Define

Hire Or Not

Before you open a role, make sure a new person is the real answer.

Find

Sourcing Map

List where the people you want actually spend their time.

Interview

Interview Loop Design

Plan the whole set of interviews so each one tests different items on the scorecard, with no gaps and no repeats.

One card in full

Decide

Independent Scores First

Everyone scores before anyone talks, so the loudest voice doesn't become the verdict.

Put four interviewers in a room before anyone has written a word, and the first confident opinion becomes everyone's opinion. The fix is cheap: lock in each judgement before the group can bend it.

How to use it

1. Ask every interviewer to complete their Rubric Scoring sheet within an hour of their interview, while the evidence is fresh.
2. For each scorecard item, they write a score and one or two pieces of evidence: what the candidate said or did, not adjectives.
3. Add an overall call: strong yes, yes, no or strong no. Leave out 'maybe'; it hides the decision.
4. Nobody discusses the candidate, in person or in chat, until every sheet is in.
5. Lay the sheets side by side before the Debrief That Decides. Any gap of two points or more goes on the agenda.

Example

A hypothetical 15-person studio hiring a backend engineer collects four sheets: three yeses and one strong no on system design. Because the no was written down first, its evidence (the candidate never considered what happens when things fail) gets a full hearing instead of being talked away. The same idea works for other group decisions; see Confidence Vote, where the lowest scores speak first.

Watch out

• A hiring manager who 'just shares a first impression' in the corridor undoes the whole thing.
• Scores without evidence are feelings with numbers attached.

Recipes

• Fair Interview Loop: Design a set of interviews where every scorecard item is tested once, every candidate gets the same questions and every answer meets the same marks.
• Fill The Pipeline: Reach good people who are not looking, through places, messages and referrals that widen the pool instead of narrowing it.
• Great Candidate Experience: Treat every candidate, hired or not, so they would recommend applying to you.
• Make The Hiring Call: Go from interview notes to a hire or no-hire decision on evidence, then turn a yes into an offer you can explain.
• Open A Role: Turn "we need someone" into a role worth advertising: a real need, clear outcomes, a short list of must-haves, a fair pay band and an ad people want to read.

Missions

• Open a role: from "we need someone" to a scorecard, a pay band, a job ad and an interview loop, ready to publish.
• Run a hiring debrief: from a pile of interview notes to an evidence-based decision, with bias checked, reasons recorded and next steps for the candidate.
• Settle in a new teammate: from an accepted offer to a ninety-day plan with agreed success, a briefed buddy, a team restart, check-ins at set points and a better welcome for the next person.
• Build a question set for one role: from a role scorecard to eight to twelve prompts, each mapped to a must-have competency, with a scoring anchor per prompt and a rule for who asks what.
• Calibrate an interview panel: from interviewers asking their own favourite questions to a panel that asks the same prompts, scores the same practice answers within one point of each other and has refreshed the over-used prompts.

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