To hire for traits over background, Mark Kosaglo suggests testing for coachability directly. Run a skill-based roleplay (e.g., discovery), provide specific feedback, and then run the exact same roleplay again. The key is to see if the candidate can actually implement the coaching, not just if they are open to receiving it.

To accurately assess an unteachable trait like coachability, you can't just ask about it. You must create a situation that requires it. For coachability, run a brief role-play, provide direct feedback, and ask them to do it again, observing their verbal and non-verbal reactions to the coaching itself.

Before being involved in interviews, you can learn to hire by observing which coworkers you collaborate with best. This trains you to value traits like coachability and desire to improve over raw skill, honing your ability to evaluate candidates before you're responsible for building a team.

A common hiring mistake is prioritizing a conversational 'vibe check' over assessing actual skills. A much better approach is to give candidates a project that simulates the job's core responsibilities, providing a direct and clean signal of their capabilities.

When doing outbound recruiting for sales talent, flip the script on the first call. Instead of grilling the candidate, treat it as a sales call where you're selling them on the company. The goal is to determine if it's a "great or terrible use of time" to continue, with the promise that the grilling comes later.

For roles where you hire for personality and train skills from scratch (like HVAC techs), traditional recruiting is inefficient. Use local ads to generate high volume and group interviews to quickly triage candidates and identify the right cultural fit before moving to one-on-ones.

Ineffective interviews try to catch candidates failing. A better approach models a collaborative rally: see how they handle challenging questions and if they can return the ball effectively. The goal is to simulate real-world problem-solving, not just grill them under pressure.

Upload interview transcripts and a job description into an AI tool. Program it to define the top criteria for the role and rate each candidate's transcript against them. This provides an objective analysis that counteracts personal affinity bias and reveals details missed during the live conversation.

Traditional onboarding takes months to reveal a new hire's effectiveness. By requiring recruits to teach back core concepts from day one, managers can assess their competence, coachability, and work ethic in as little as three weeks, dramatically reducing the time and cost of a bad hire.