When choosing between four candidates, I want to know who will actually do the job well, so I do not hire a good interviewee and re-hire in six months.

Job context

Who

A recruiter deciding jointly with a line manager

When

At the final round, usually within a week

Trigger

Someone leaving after four months with everyone saying they saw the signs

Situation

Interviews measure interviewing while the job measures something else

Constraints

No real trial is possible, and good candidates have options

5 Pains

• Interviews measure interviewing

  High

  Someone who talks well about work is not necessarily good at it.

  Root cause: An interview resembles the job in no respect

• Does not know if their hiring is any good

  High

  Nobody compares interview scores with performance a year later.

  Root cause: The hiring feedback loop is longer than the recruiter's tenure

• Line managers decide on gut feel

  High

  Reasons are supplied after a decision formed in the first five minutes.

  Root cause: Gut feel arrives faster than data and sounds convincing

• Good candidates have options, so the process must be fast

  Medium

  Time is the enemy of careful assessment.

  Root cause: A tight market forces the process shorter

• Misses strong people with unimpressive CVs

  Medium

  The first filter screens on the past rather than on capability.

  Root cause: Volume forces filtering on cheap proxies

5 Desired Outcomes

• Assess the actual capability to do the work

  Functional

• Know the quality of their hiring a year on

  Functional

• Line managers decide on evidence

  Social

• Assess carefully and still move fast

  Functional

• Feel less like every hire is a gamble

  Emotional

5 Existing Solutions

A solution is not the same thing as a product — a customer can hire a behaviour or a workaround too.

• A work sample instead of an interview

  Product

  The best predictor available, costing time on both sides.

• A structured interview guide

  Product

  Genuinely reduces bias and gets abandoned the moment someone feels a connection.

• Reference checks

  Behaviour

  Speaking to people the candidate selected, which is a pre-filtered sample.

• A paid trial period

  Service

  The only real test, available only to candidates who are not employed.

• Record the assessment and compare a year later

  Workaround

  People leads close the feedback loop no system closes for them.

2 Opportunity Gaps

• Nobody compares interview assessments with actual performance, so the whole profession has no data to improve on.

  Why existing solutions fail: The comparison requires keeping the assessment for a year and joining it to performance reviews — two different systems, and nobody is measured on joining them.

  Potential opportunity: Automatically joining interview scores to first-year reviews, so hiring quality becomes a number.

• Assessing real capability requires doing the real work, and doing the real work requires already being hired.

  Why existing solutions fail: Work samples come closest and demand unpaid time from someone already employed, so they self-select for candidates who are free.

  Potential opportunity: A short paid exercise done whenever the candidate chooses, separating the test from who happens to be available.