Hiring Decisions
How Do You Choose Between Two Strong Job Candidates?
Finding qualified candidates is one problem. Choosing between two people who are both qualified is a completely different one.
You've interviewed the candidates. The team has compared notes. References may have been checked. You've narrowed the field from twenty people to three, and now maybe to two.
Both can do the job.
Now what?
This is where hiring gets surprisingly difficult.
Finding qualified candidates is one problem. Choosing between two people who are both qualified is a completely different one.
And this is often where a hiring process that was fairly structured becomes much less structured.
Someone says, “I liked her.”
Someone else says, “I thought he was stronger.”
One interviewer remembers an excellent answer to a question. Another remembers an awkward moment. Someone has more experience. Someone else feels like they might fit the team better.
None of those observations are necessarily wrong.
The problem is that they aren't answering the same question.
Start with the job, not the candidates
When two strong candidates are sitting in front of you, it's very easy to start comparing Candidate A directly with Candidate B.
Try something different.
Go back to the job.
What does the person taking this job actually need to be able to do?
What will they own? What will they inherit? What will they have to build? What kind of company are they walking into?
A VP of Sales joining a 75-person startup is walking into a very different job from a VP of Sales joining a 5,000-person company—even if both positions have exactly the same title.
The same is true for an engineer, sales executive, sales engineer, marketing leader, or customer success leader.
Before asking “Which candidate is better?” ask: “What does success in this particular job require?”
That gives you something much more useful to compare each candidate against.
Separate capability from fit
One of the biggest mistakes in hiring is treating capability and fit as the same thing.
They aren't.
A candidate can be exceptionally capable and still be the wrong person for a particular role.
Someone may have led a large organization, managed a substantial budget, worked with major customers and delivered impressive results.
That's evidence of capability.
But suppose you're hiring the first sales leader at a Series A company.
There may be no established sales process. No mature enablement organization. No large team. Maybe no sales operations function. The founder may still be involved in every significant deal.
The question isn't whether the candidate is accomplished.
The question is whether the candidate can succeed here.
Candidate Capability
Can this person perform at the level the job requires?
Role Fit
Does their experience and operating style match what this particular role requires?
Company / Stage Fit
Can they succeed in the environment they're actually joining?
Those three answers aren't always the same.
And that's important.
Then ask the uncomfortable question: What is the evidence?
This is the part of hiring I've become increasingly interested in.
We make a lot of statements about candidates:
“She has excellent executive presence.”
“He's very strategic.”
“She can build a team.”
“He understands enterprise customers.”
“He'll work well with the founders.”
Fine.
What did we actually observe that caused us to believe that?
There is a meaningful difference between a judgment and the evidence supporting that judgment.
Maybe the candidate described a specific situation, explained what they did, why they did it and what happened.
That's evidence.
Maybe several interviewers independently observed the same capability. That's useful evidence too.
But sometimes, when you go back through the interview notes, you discover something interesting.
Everyone gave the candidate a high rating—but nobody wrote down much that explains why.
That doesn't necessarily mean the rating is wrong.
It means you have something you may want to validate before making the offer.
“I don't know” is useful information
Hiring teams sometimes behave as though every box needs to be filled in by the end of the interview process.
I don't think that's true.
There are things you simply may not have observed.
Suppose you're hiring someone into a leadership position and one of the requirements is the ability to coach struggling employees.
Nobody asked about it. The candidate never discussed it. There is no evidence either way.
That shouldn't automatically become a low score.
It should become: Not observed.
That's useful information because now you know exactly what to do next: ask the question, run another conversation, use the reference check, or give the candidate a specific scenario.
The objective isn't to make uncertainty disappear from the assessment.
The objective is to find the uncertainty before you make the decision.
Don't let the average score make the decision
This is another place where hiring systems can create false confidence.
Candidate A gets an 87.
Candidate B gets an 84.
Hire Candidate A?
Not necessarily.
Those numbers can help organize information, but they shouldn't replace judgment.
Imagine Candidate A has stronger overall scores but the unanswered question involves the single most important responsibility in the job.
Candidate B scores slightly lower overall, but there is strong evidence around the things that matter most.
An average can hide that.
The final discussion shouldn't simply be “Who scored higher?” It should be: “What do we know, what evidence supports it, and what are we still uncertain about?”
That's a much better conversation.
When two candidates are strong, look at the differences that matter
At this point, the decision usually becomes clearer.
Not necessarily easy. But clearer.
You aren't comparing two resumes anymore.
You're looking at two people against the same job.
Candidate A may have stronger technical capability.
Candidate B may have operated successfully in an environment much closer to yours.
Candidate A may have deeper leadership experience.
Candidate B may have stronger evidence of building something from scratch.
Candidate A may look better on paper.
Candidate B may better match what the job actually requires during the next eighteen months.
There doesn't have to be a universally “better candidate.”
There needs to be a candidate who makes sense for this job, in this company, at this point in time.
Before you make the offer, ask one last question
Instead of asking:
“Are we ready to hire this person?”
Ask something else.
“What would we wish we had known if this hire doesn't work out?”
That's a very different question.
Maybe it's whether the person can operate without a large support organization.
Maybe it's whether they can move from managing to doing.
Maybe it's how they handle disagreement with a founder.
Maybe it's whether they really understand the customer you're selling to.
Maybe it's whether they've actually done something they spoke confidently about in the interview.
Whatever it is, that's probably what you should validate next.
Not another generic interview.
Not another round of “tell me about yourself.”
A very specific conversation designed to answer a very specific question.
The goal isn't certainty
No hiring process can tell you with certainty that someone will succeed.
People are too complicated. Companies change. Jobs change. Managers change. Markets change.
The goal is to make the decision with your eyes open.
Know what the candidate has demonstrated.
Know where they fit the role.
Know where they fit the company and its stage.
Know what evidence supports those conclusions.
And know what you still don't know.
After interviewing more than 2,000 people and participating in hundreds of hiring decisions, I've come to believe that the last one may be the most important.
A strong candidate isn't always the right candidate.
And sometimes the best thing you can learn before making an offer isn't another reason to say yes.
It's what you still need to find out.
Hiring Confidence™
You've narrowed the field. Now make the decision.
Hiring Confidence helps hiring teams evaluate finalists across candidate capability, role fit, company and stage fit, and the evidence behind those judgments—so you can see what still needs to be validated before making an offer.
Try Hiring Confidence