"The person I thought I hired is not the person who showed up."
It's a phrase most experienced leaders have said at some point, and it points to something worth understanding properly, rather than simply chalking up to bad luck.
When anyone walks into an interview, they are, quite naturally, trying to perform at their best. Some people call this "dating behaviour", putting your best self forward, the way most of us do on a first date. Some people are naturally gifted at this. Others have been trained and coached to navigate interviews well. And then there are people who are genuinely excellent at the job, but who simply don't perform well in an interview setting. They can come across as less capable than they actually are, purely because the interview format doesn't suit how they naturally operate.
Unless an interviewer is exceptionally skilled and intuitive, these dynamics are very difficult to see in the moment.
Here's a real example. Two candidates were being considered for a sales "hunter" role, the kind of role that requires someone who thrives on new business, pursuit, and the chase. Both candidates talked like hunters in their interviews. Why wouldn't they? That's what the job advertisement called for.
But through assessment, and a more targeted second interview, it became clear that both candidates were actually "farmers", people whose natural talent lies in nurturing existing relationships and growing accounts over time, not chasing new ones. And when the right questions were asked, both candidates acknowledged it themselves.
Here's the interesting part. The first interviewer, who was himself a natural hunter, looking for another hunter, had been completely convinced by both candidates. He wanted to see hunters, so in many ways, that's what he saw. That's confirmation bias at work, and it's a remarkably normal part of being human.
This points to something important: what people say about their own talents isn't necessarily inaccurate on purpose, but it is often subjective. We all carry bias, about ourselves and about others, and we're not always the most reliable narrators of our own capability.
Having an objective view of someone's natural talents doesn't remove the human element from hiring. But it does help remove some of that bias, giving everyone involved a clearer, more honest picture of where someone is genuinely likely to thrive.
