Interviewing is broken.  Has been for years. This rigid commitment everyone seems to have to the standard resume/cover letter/interview system of hiring is just plain insane.

I've been fascinated by hiring processes for years.  Hiring great talent is such a massively tough challenge, and I see so few companies that do it well.  Even the best companies hide a deep dark secret: their hiring processes don't predict success accurately.  It's long been whispered that Google's sophisticated HR scoring system has little correlation with an employee's success at the company.  One management consultant for a top firm told me recently that, despite incredible efforts to improve hiring analytics, the best predictor of success for junior employees was still just their SAT scores.

Paul English, one of the absolute best said this about his style of hiring at Kayak:

 

"At times, I've fired maybe one out of every three people I've hired. That might make people think I'm bad at hiring, but I think I'm quite good at hiring."

So, Paul English, one of the most respected out there, gets 1 out of 3 wrong?  Shit.  This stuff is hard.  But Kayak is at a stage of development where the organization can sustain the disruption of people leaving.  Most startups I know have such difficulty firing because everything is already so unstable.  Can't fire during a product launch. Can't fire during a funding round.  Let's give him 3 more months and see if things improve...

This is so important for companies and people to learn.