Interview kit

Loop design

Each round owns specific competencies. No two rounds test the same thing by accident.

Round	Owner	Length	Tests	Type 1	Type 2
Screen	Hiring manager	30 min	Deal-breakers, motivation, top outcome	Yes	Yes
Outcome deep-dive	Hiring manager	60 to 90 min	The two heaviest outcomes, in detail	Yes	Yes
Functional depth	Peer or expert	60 min	Critical competencies	Yes	Optional
Live exercise, feedback and repeat	Hiring manager plus one observer	45 to 60 min	One critical outcome, plus learning speed	Yes	Recommended
Values and working style	CEO or founder	60 to 120 min, unstructured setting	Behaviors list and both mindset questions	Yes	Mindset questions in the screen
References	Hiring manager	15 to 20 min each	Evidence gaps	Yes	Light

Behavioral questions only

Past behavior predicts future behavior. Hypotheticals test imagination.

Hypothetical, do not ask	Behavioral, ask
How would you fix our forecast?	Tell me about the last forecast you owned that missed. What happened and what did you change?
How would you coach an underperformer?	Walk me through a specific rep you turned around. What did you do in week one?
What makes a good sales hire?	Tell me about the last sales hire you made that failed. When did you know?
How do you handle conflict with peers?	Describe the last time you disagreed with a peer executive on a resource decision. How did it resolve?

Follow every answer three levels down: what exactly did you do, what happened as a result, what would you do differently. Strong candidates get more specific under follow-up. Weak ones get more general.

The failure question

Ask every candidate: "Tell me about a time something you owned failed."

Do not ask whether they have failed. Ask what they do with failure. Listen for six things:

1. What they expected to happen
2. What actually happened
3. What they personally got wrong
4. What it cost
5. What they learned
6. What they changed afterward

Strong candidates do not need to humiliate themselves. They do need to show reality-based self-assessment.

"I have never failed" is an evidence gap, not a strength. Anyone who has held real responsibility has had outcomes go wrong. Unexplained perfection usually means one of four things: low self-awareness, blame placed elsewhere, unwillingness to disclose, or managing the interview instead of engaging with it. Probe once. If the answer does not change, record it as an evidence gap on self-awareness and accountability, and test it hard in references.

Senior hires: the force-multiplier questions

For leaders and senior specialists, "can this person perform?" is not enough. Ask: what happens to everyone else's performance when this person joins?

• "Tell me about someone who became much better at their job because of you. What did you do?"
• "Describe a time you moved into a very different company or industry. What from your expertise transferred, and what had to change?"
• "Where is your expertise weakest, and whose judgment do you defer to there?"
• "Tell me about a decision your team made without you that turned out better than yours would have."

Listen for expertise that transfers across contexts, self-awareness about its limits, and evidence that colleagues improved. Expertise that only works in one environment, or that requires every answer to route through the expert, becomes a constraint.

Senior external hires: test transferability

Past performance is evidence of capability in a context. For any senior hire from a different kind of company, add three questions and one case:

• "Tell me about a time the practices that made you successful stopped working. What did you change?"
• "What was already in place when you arrived that made your results possible?"
• "Which assumption about how to lead did you find was wrong in your last new environment?"

Then describe this company's real management cadence and decision rights, add a tension ("your leaders want more autonomy; the CEO says execution is inconsistent"), probe the answer, and change one variable to see whether it changes. Principles adapt. Playbooks repeat.

Scoring scale

Score each competency 1 to 4, in writing, before the debrief.

Score	Meaning	Evidence standard
4	Has done this repeatedly at the required scale	Two or more specific examples with results
3	Has done this, at smaller scale or once	One specific example with a result
2	Understands it, limited direct experience	Describes it well, examples are thin or secondhand
1	No evidence	General statements only

A critical competency at 2 or below is a no-hire unless a named plan covers the gap.

Red flags

• Uses "we" for every success and "they" for every failure
• Cannot name a mistake that cost them something
• Describes former colleagues with contempt
• Every example is from more than five years ago
• Numbers change when asked twice

Referrals and sponsors

A referral earns a candidate access, not exemption. It gets someone into the process. It never lowers the evidence standard.

The stronger the recommender, the stronger the pull of borrowed credibility, and the more disciplined the interviewer must be. The same applies when a senior leader is sponsoring the candidate. Mark referred and sponsored candidates in the decision package, and ask every interviewer: "What am I believing only because someone I trust recommended this person?"

Likability is not evidence either. A candidate who creates a warm impression still has to show the behaviors the outcomes require: focus, follow-through, disciplined activity. Enthusiasm about succeeding is not the same as consistently doing what success requires.

Debrief protocol

1. Every interviewer submits written scores and evidence before the debrief.
2. The most junior interviewer speaks first, to prevent anchoring on seniority.
3. Discuss disagreements of 2 or more points on any competency first.
4. The hiring manager decides. The debrief informs; it does not vote.