THE LEAFLET
June 05 2025
hiring for behaviors over credentials, map the caps don’t break the ice, on petty perfectionism
HIRING FOR BEHAVIORS OVER CREDENTIALS
It’s crucial that the CEOs go into their hiring process by defining behaviors—rather than qualifications—that yield success on the job. My clients who lead AI safety firms interview a lot of candidates with engineering backgrounds who believe in the mission of safer technology. Leaders want to discern which candidates have sound analytical habits when they come face to face with material they’ve never seen before.
As an example of how to do this, the CEOs will give candidates code to interface with or an app to use during their job interview. They’ll explain: This is how we tend to test this for potential dangers. They’ll give the person a list of instructions, then have them analyze and run the test. The person will typically do a mediocre job. It’s the first time they’ve ever done this, after all.
After the first round, the CEO provides some feedback on how the candidate can improve: I’m going to give you three pointers to level up before you try again. After that, I want you to run the test again to see how you do with the tips we’ve given you. Then the candidate makes another attempt.
Now with two points of reference, the CEO has the ability to track improvement, regardless of performance. If they do better the second time, it’s possible to extrapolate how the person is able to improve over time – a much better metric in any sector, compared to baseline competency.
In other words, finding candidates who can continuously improve is better understood by tracing the slope of someone’s line (i.e. how much they are able to improve), than simply looking at the dot that represents their abilities when they walked in the door. One candidate might be quite strong on the first round, but only respond marginally well to advice given for the second and third attempts. Another candidate—perhaps the candidate who can grow most effectively—might start off with lower abilities, but be able to constantly adapt to feedback that improves their performance. Even though that candidate might need more assistance early on, they’ll eventually grow into the higher performer of the two.
This type of exercise not only helps managers find great candidates, it also opens the door to setting realistic expectations for new hires from the get-go. You worked your butt off, and you took feedback really well, the CEO may tell the candidate they’re hoping to hire. It looked to me like you enjoyed figuring out how to rise to the challenge. But you should know that if you work here, that’ll be happening every day. There’ll never be a plateau. You’ll never feel like you ‘arrived.’ What feels good to the people who work here is constant growth. Is that something that’s appealing to you?
Whether you work on technology’s bleeding edge or in a practice that’s centuries old (like law or education), hire for behaviors over credentials.
-ben
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MAP THE CAPS, DON’T BREAK THE ICE
Many of us have learned to cringe when we see the faintest signal that an icebreaker is coming. For some, this is one of the worst things that happens at work. You’re embarrassed; what’s worse, you’re uselessly embarrassed. You have to do something awkward or revealing but so often it doesn’t actually build a relationship or break down a barrier. It just makes you resent the leader who forces you to do it.
I’m the kind of nerd with a little improv/theater kid inside who actually likes icebreakers, so when I’m in charge I have to be careful. If I’m going to have folks take on some social discomfort, I want it to be useful. I have to think like a designer; there should be a point.
One exercise I’ve found to be quite good for this is in the cheesily-titled and enduringly useful Discover Your True North Fieldbook. The premise is simple: you split your life story into chapters with titles. To do this, you turn a sheet of paper sideways, landscape orientation, and draw a timeline of your life, from birth to present. Then you add in major events and group them into 4-6 chapters that you give titles. In a more detailed version, you add a few bullet points to each chapter that indicate what was most important to you during that chapter, what took most of your time and attention, which value of yours was most at play or in question.
With a group, I split folks into pairs and have them share their timelines with each other chapter by chapter. Usually, I give ~15 mins for the telling of the tale and another ~10 mins for Q+A. Then repeat, with the other partner as the storyteller. If you do this thoroughly, it takes an hour.
Obviously, the typical icebreaker is much shorter than this. But I have found it’s worth trading in a month’s worth of weak, cringey icebreakers for one run of the Life Story in Chapters. With this one, you’re mapping the ice caps and making sense of them, not just trying to break them with one clumsy hammer.
You actually get to know someone in a pretty holistic way and they have control over how deep or superficial their revelations are. Doing the exercise usually teaches me something useful about myself, too.
-eric
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ON PETTY PERFECTIONISM (ACTUALLY TRYING PART 4)
It’s easy to confuse a certain petty perfectionism with Actually Trying. This is one of the ways we can expend a lot of effort and look at a subsequent failure and say, “hey, I gave it my best.” If you’re approaching this thing like it really matters, like it has grandma-in-the-cave stakes, you target that exertion, your best effort, at the thing you think is likeliest to unlock the next level of output or performance. You look for the domino that can tip the rest of the dominoes. You don’t go to the gym and try to walk even faster circles around the weight bench. You go and lay down on the bench and move the bar.
Some examples that aren’t metaphorical or athletic:
Petty perfectionism: We make a sexy, graphic designed pitch deck with VC-friendly buzzwords.
Pushing a domino: We make a product so good that people rave to their friends about it.
Petty perfectionism: We polish and buff and refine this middle paragraph of the cover letter that’s going to be skimmed, at best, by the hiring team on the other side.
Pushing a domino (actually trying): We accomplish something relevant and impressive in this sector and put it at the top of the resume and cover letter in bold.
Petty perfectionism: We load up a recommendation memo to the CEO with data-rich footnotes and appendices without adjusting the core argument in it.
Pushing a domino (actually trying): We talk to a leader who has successfully persuaded this CEO before and ask what this CEO finds most persuasive. (It might not be a memo at all).
I’m not saying you shouldn’t do the petty perfectionist stuff. (Don’t send cover letters with typos, even if you don’t think people are going to read it.) But don’t do it first and don’t let the minutes or hours you spend on it convince you that you’ve done all you can.
-eric
Read the rest here.
COMPELLING QUOTES
Tech podcaster Dwarkesh Patel on human value:
The reason humans are so useful is not mainly their raw intelligence. It’s their ability to build up context, interrogate their own failures, and pick up small improvements and efficiencies as they practice a task
Animal behavior scholar Dr. Carlo Siracusa on a cat study:
I really commend this group of scientists for being successful in engaging 30 cats in doing this stuff. Most cats want nothing to do with your research.
Flag design expert Ted Kaye on successful symbols:
If you need to write the name of what you’re representing on your flag, your symbolism has failed.
Keep going, keep growing,
Ben & Eric