Hiring
Four signs you’re about to hire the wrong person
The bad hires were rarely surprises. Looking back, the signals were always there.
Arsénio Ferraz — CEO & Co-Founder, Venora · 3 September 2026 · 5 min read
I’ve hired a lot of people over the years. Some of those hires were among the best decisions of my professional life. Some were among the worst.
What took me longer to admit: the bad ones were rarely surprises. Looking back, the signals were there every time. I just ignored them, because I wanted that hire to work out.
Over time I’ve reduced them to four. If you hire in an SME, where every person is a meaningful percentage of the team, they’re worth keeping on the wall.
Sign 1: You’re hiring to fill the vacancy, not to solve the problem
When a role has been open too long, urgency starts making the decisions. The workload piles up, the team is stretched, and the bar quietly drops from “is this the right person?” to “can this person start Monday?”
When haste speaks louder than judgement, you’re hiring relief, not talent. Relief feels wonderful for about six weeks, roughly until the cost of the wrong hire exceeds the cost of the empty chair, which it always does. We’ve broken down what that cost actually adds up to.
The test: if this candidate had applied while the previous person was still in the seat, would you be excited? If not, you’re buying painkillers.
Sign 2: You talked more than you listened in the interview
You leave the interview energised. It went great, you told the company’s story, painted the vision, watched them nod along.
Then ask yourself: what did you actually learn about them?
If you walked out having sold the company instead of understanding the person, you didn’t assess them. You convinced yourself. An interview where the interviewer talks 70% of the time produces exactly one data point: the candidate is good at nodding.
The fix is boring and effective: prepared questions, real listening, and the discipline to leave silences for the candidate to fill.
Sign 3: You ignore how they treat people they don’t need to impress
Candidates are at their best in front of the hiring decision-maker. That’s expected, it’s a performance context, and everyone performs.
The signal lives elsewhere: how they talk about former bosses and colleagues. How they treated the person who greeted them at the door. Whether their tone shifts when they think status has left the room.
The way someone behaves toward people they don’t need to impress says more than any rehearsed answer. It’s the closest thing an interview offers to a preview of how they’ll treat your team on a bad Tuesday.
Sign 4: You feel the need to justify the choice to yourself
This is the quiet one, and the most reliable.
If you catch yourself building the case, “the experience gap isn’t that big… the culture thing will settle… we can work around the attitude…”, pause. Good hires don’t need internal lobbying. If you have to convince yourself, you already have your answer.
Doubt at this stage isn’t indecisiveness. It’s data.
No CV warns you about any of this
Here’s the common thread: none of these four signals lives in a CV. They live in the process, in your urgency, your interviews, your attention, your gut.
That’s also, frankly, why we built Venora the way we did. Software is genuinely good at the volume problem: reading every application, surfacing likely fits, explaining why. What it should never do is take over the part where these four signals appear, the human read of a human being. Automate the reading; keep the judgement. If you want the fuller picture of where that line sits, see our honest guide to AI in recruitment for SMEs.
Which of the four has caught you?