Gate each interview step, then sell at the close

1. The interview is a sales conversation

The mistake. Some founders run interviews as if the candidate were the one being done a favor, and that is wrong. The strongest people have options: picture them weighing you against three other offers, or doing their own thing and starting a business. Every interview, in the view here, is a sale.

Who has to sell whom. An error a lot of people make while trying to attract the very best: expecting the candidate to persuade them why the job should be theirs. If you do not sell while the process runs, your best candidate will go to an employer who does.

Where the effort goes. Most founders assess the candidate at every step, and that is wrong. The screen should be brief; the effort belongs in selling.

It is a sales process. The interview comes straight after the stage where you keep candidates interested: once that is working, your interviews are your sales process. You can copy the steps below or adjust them to suit you.

2. Five steps, and a way out after each

The steps run in this order, each with its length. At every step before the close, if the answer is no, the process stops there.

Step	Length	What it asks	How	If the answer is no
Screen	15 minutes, or 15 to 30 minutes	Could this person do the job? Check the basics: qualifications, experience, whether they are available	Kept quick	Stop here
Culture	30 minutes	Do they fit your three non-negotiables?	Questions about behavior, linked to your values	Stop here
Skill	60 minutes	Is their work up to the standard you need?	Have them work through it in a session, or set a case study; nothing hypothetical	Stop here
Alignment	30 minutes	Is what you offer what they are after: the growth path, the pay structure, the mission?	The hiring manager sells and checks what drives them	Stop here
Close	30 minutes	Does their own vision line up with yours?	A call with the founder, the chief executive or an executive, selling the vision	By now you are closing, not assessing

Why five, and when fewer. This version is a little inflated, one would say, because many of the people who apply have to be screened out. It can shrink to three if you choose to fold the alignment call and the close into a single call, though merging two of the five steps leaves four (section 11). Even so, the five steps are the standard to follow, and, if anything, a lot of people skip them.

3. The screen and the culture step

A fast first check. The screen is very short: is the person qualified on the basics, and can they do the job? You are confirming only that you agree they could do the work and that you have the job open for them. If the answer is no, you stop there, and spare both their time and yours.

Culture can end it. The culture step asks whether they fit your three non-negotiables and whether they live out those values. If they do not, the process ends at culture and they never reach skill. Fit on culture cannot be bargained over.

Where another page differs. Here, the culture step asks about behavior linked to your values. SOP 269, section 1, asks candidates no questions about the values, no 'tell me about a time' either, and tests each value live. This page does not settle which reading is right.

A flag is not a stop. An interviewer who is unsure about a value can flag it instead: they pass it to the next interviewer and ask them to probe whether the candidate can show a little more of that value. A flag does not rule the person out for good. But if you find two of the three values, or half of your values, do not match, the practice here is to let that person go from the process.

4. The skill step: have them do the work

The question. Whether their work reaches the standard your company needs.

How to test it. It can be a working session: you give them live scenarios, ask what they would do, and have them recall work they have done before. It can also be a case study they complete away from the call and hand in to you.

An example. For someone joining as a video editor, one practice here is to have them edit a video rather than ask them to talk you through how they once edited one; they produce the edit and you look at the result. It is that simple.

Two readings differ. One rules out hypotheticals and the prompt that asks the candidate to tell you about a time when: the candidate should show you. The other has the working session include having them recall past work of their own. This page does not settle which reading is right.

5. Alignment and the close

Alignment. Do they want what you offer? What has to be checked: the pay plan, the growth plan, the structure, the hiring manager, and things of that kind. An example of a mismatch: if they want a 9-5, a job that is fast-paced and high-growth does not suit them.

The close. By the time a candidate reaches the founder, the assessing has stopped: the founder sells the vision and makes sure the candidate's own vision fits it, lining up the candidate's picture of their own future with the role and with where they could go in the company.

One call or two. You can hold alignment and the close together or apart. Which to do depends on the role, on how certain you are about the candidate, and on how much ground you have already covered. One practice here is to decide role by role, because you never really know: sometimes one more call with a candidate is wanted, and sometimes it is all done in one.

What to tell them on that last call. One practice here is to say you are not there to sell them on the role, but to check that your offer matches what they are looking for, and to mean it. The reason: if what the company provides does not match their own wishes for their future, it will not work over the long run, and you will only have wasted your time.

Where another page differs. SOP 174 — Standardize selection and the founder's final interview, section 5, at the larger size that page covers, has the founder hold a short final interview as a check, to make sure nothing is missed and to see where standards are slipping. This page says that by the close the founder is no longer assessing. This page does not settle which reading is right.

6. Hold more than one interview

Not just one. A lot of people hold a single interview and call it a day. The advice here is not to. At least for now, if you hold one, hold two; if you hold three, hold four. It is thought you can hold four or five; how many is up to you, and in the opinion here four or five is the sweet spot.

Even with a small team. You might object that you do not have enough people for this. One founder started holding four interviews while the team was still small, before knowing what to do, on the advice that founder had been given. The founder ran most of them in person; it was hard, and the interviewing never stopped. But at least the people brought in were the right fit. With how little skill the founder then had at choosing whom to hire, filtering less would have made things far worse.

Where another page differs. SOP 149, section 9, written for a business with a small team, uses one quick screen and then one interview run by one person, because there are few people on the team; SOP 163, section 7, keeps frontline roles such as editors on that lighter process. This page urges more than one interview, putting the sweet spot, in the opinion here, at four or five; one founder held four while the team was small. This page does not settle which reading is right.

7. Open every interview the same way

Set expectations first. The time has passed for starting an interview by asking the candidate to tell you about one thing after another. The first move is to set expectations. Confirm they have already talked with others about the job, the role and the company, then tell them the order: an overview of the company, then the role, then the future. Ask whether that works for them, then say you will leave time for their questions afterwards, at least 20 minutes.

They are interviewing you too. You are not only judging them. The better someone is, the more options they have, and the harder they are judging you. One practice here is to tell people their questions should fill at least 30 percent of the time in an interview.

Context, every time. Whatever the role, begin each interview with the company, the role, and why the company is hiring for it at all.

8. The process as the candidate goes through it

Keep in mind what the whole process is like for the candidate: how you talk to them; how quickly you book the calls between steps; how the communication feels; whether you send them material between calls; whether you thank them; whether they are writing to you. It is a dance between two sides. A reply within a day to every candidate, and treating each one as a customer, are set out in SOP 267, section 6.

9. Trial periods and internships

Asked whether a test period or an internship is recommended, the answer:

• It is thought you could do it for roles at entry level where turnover is high. For a lot of roles, it is thought, it does not make sense, and it shows you are unable to select people while you hire.
• Roles that might suit a trial: perhaps an SDR, perhaps an entry-level role. Roles at entry level, filled by people with little experience of work, are good ones to try it with.
• Above entry level, where the job calls for plenty of experience, the view here is not to do it: it would, it is thought, come across as somewhat insulting.
• When someone is new to working and the job is junior, that is often where it is seen to work.

Hiring for a role with high volume and high churn, such as SDRs, through group interviews is SOP 253 — Run a group interview for high-volume roles.

10. Hiring an executive

Asked what has to be learned about hiring at a higher level, the answer names the biggest difference: people hunt for a bigger helping of what they already have. A marketing person, then a marketing manager, then the next one up, as though each were the same job, only bigger. It is not. At some point that stops holding, and what you want is someone completely different, not someone able to do more of the same.

Not better at the team's own jobs. Take, for example, an executive joining a team: the aim is not someone good, or even better, at what the team already does. You do not necessarily want them able to do those jobs at all, or to have spent a long time doing them. Typically, when you hire an executive, and taking one founder's business as an example, what is sought is a thought partner, someone who thinks, there only for strategy, for building the team and for gathering resources.

The reasons. The view here is that an executive does not necessarily need to be able to do every task at every moment. One founder could not, as the business stood at the time, step into every job on day one, so that founder should not expect it of every executive hired. And if the executives are not the ones thinking for the business and about where it is going, who is?

The mistake. What a lot of people do: they are so afraid of hiring someone who only thinks about strategy that they hire someone who is still, underneath, a doer. That is probably the biggest mistake seen here.

SOP 44 — Buy or build talent, section 4.1, says a senior advertising hire is brought in to grow a department without you, not to do the advertising.

11. What this page does not decide for you

• Three steps or four. Folding the alignment call and the close into one is said to bring the process down to three steps; merging two of the five leaves four. Planning for three means dropping one more step, and which one: Not established on this page. Planning for four keeps every gate and saves one call. This page does not settle which reading is right.

• What clears a culture flag. What the next interviewer must see before a flagged value passes: Not established on this page.

• Which interviews count. Whether the count of interviews includes the screen: Not established on this page.

• The behavioral questions. No list of questions for the culture step is given. Not established on this page.

12. The checklist

Step	What to do
1	Treat each interview as a sale: the best candidates have other options, and they are judging you
2	Run the steps in order: screen, culture, skill, alignment, close; at every step before the close, stop if the answer is no
3	Keep the screen quick: 15 minutes, or 15 to 30
4	At culture, check fit against your three non-negotiables, asking about behavior linked to your values; if two of the three, or half, do not match, stop
5	If a culture interviewer is unsure, they can pass a flag to the next interviewer instead of stopping
6	Test skill by having the candidate do the work: a working session with live scenarios, or a case study handed in
7	At alignment, check that what you offer is what they are after (pay, growth path, structure, hiring manager and so on); the hiring manager sells and checks what drives them
8	Hold the close with the founder or an executive and sell the vision; you can merge it with alignment, depending on the role and what you already know
9	Hold more than one interview, as urged here: if you hold one, hold two, at least for now; four or five is the sweet spot in the opinion here
10	Open each interview by setting out the order (company, role, what lies ahead) and promise at least 20 minutes for their questions
11	In the view here, at least 30 percent of each interview belongs to the candidate's own questions
12	If you consider a trial period, it is thought it could suit roles at entry level with high turnover, not experienced ones
13	For an executive, look for someone different, not more of the same: typically a thought partner and thinker

13. Where this sits

• Rating the interview stage, with its question on whether you sell belief or only assess: SOP 267, section 7.
• A different way to run the culture step, testing values live: SOP 269 — Test a candidate's values live instead of asking about them.
• Finding the values the culture step tests against: SOP 260 — Make your values non-negotiable and find the ones you really hold.
• What happens after the offer: SOP 270 — Onboard every hire against a written plan, then keep them growing.
• For higher-level roles, the kinds of fit split across separate interviewers, often with the founder or chief executive judging potential: SOP 163 — Head-hunt and interview for higher-level roles, section 5.
• Panels, one set of questions and a scoring rubric: SOP 174, sections 3, 4 and 6.
• Once the business is large, the founder personally courting the best people: SOP 181 — Recruit top talent as the founder.

14. What this page does not cover

Reference checks and pay negotiation are not covered on this page. SOP 163 carries reference checks in section 6 and a candidate's negotiating in section 8.

Employment law, including the law on trial periods, internships and interview questions, is not covered on this page.