Why Smart Founders Hire Smarter People
If the only thing more important than hiring well is breathing, how do you make sure you recruit the best people for your startup?
Ok to compare hiring well with breathing is a little hyperbolic, but the quality of your early hires can largely determine whether you succeed or fail. Hire A players and you're building momentum. Hire B and C players, and you might as well start planning your wind-down.
Most startups are hiring knowledge workers. People who solve problems with their minds, not their hands. So what traits actually matter?
I always valued Hugh Williams' approach to hiring engineering talent. He used a simple character checklist:
Intellectual horsepower
Problem-solving ability
Action-oriented mindset
Results driven
It's solid advice. But what does the research actually say? Well lucky for you dear reader, I went down that rabbit hole a few years ago.
At the time blind recruitment tools were proliferating, promising to eliminate bias and deliver the best candidates. But does making the process opaque actually improve outcomes?
I dove into meta-analysis studies (as you do), and while they didn't validate blind hiring specifically, they did reveal the strongest predictors of knowledge worker success. Here are the top three:
1. General Mental Ability (IQ). We use proxies to measure this (university grades, verbal fluency, educational pedigree), but raw cognitive ability is the single strongest predictor. The effect amplifies with job complexity, though even at its peak it only explains 30-40% of the variance.
2. Work Sample Tests. Have candidates demonstrate the actual work. Hiring a writer? Ask them to write. Hiring a developer? Watch them code. Nothing predicts job performance better than... doing the job.
3. Structured Interviews. Ask every candidate the same questions, score responses quantitatively, and train your interviewers. Structure dramatically outperforms "gut feel" conversations.
These three factors are powerful predictors, but they're not the whole story. Personality, drive, cultural fit, and a dozen other variables matter too. The key is being intentional about what you're measuring and honest about what you're not.
So next time you're hiring, remember that your intuition is useful, but it's not enough. Combine it with structured, evidence-based practices, and keep an eye out for the smart ones.