The last recruiting step is crucial: I was about to hire the worst person I could. Here is how we avoided it.

I was a contract away to hire someone who is right like me.

I was in my office selecting candidates for a management position in my company. This candidate seems perfect, fitting very well our company values. I remember how frictionless the interview was. So we decided to hire.

Fortunately, we finally decided to carry out that final test.

When hiring people, avoid people who resonate too much.

A candidate precisely like you is akin to falling in love, but it adds nothing.

You don’t want a double. You want someone different to solve problems from another perspective. In our case, we don’t need other visionaries like me but to facilitate execution. We wanted someone resonating but divergent in helping team consistency.

Here is what we did to avoid the doubling error:

#1. Ask divergent people to assess

When the interviews are emotionally frictionless, you risk confirmation bias.

Ask for different POVs. Ask someone who has a different perspective than yours to assess separately. Compare your takeaways.