I recently interviewed a candidate whose technical abilities had already been evaluated by the people responsible for the role.
By the time he reached me, I was not trying to determine whether he could do the job. That question had already been answered. My responsibility was different. I was interviewing to determine his cultural fit.
His resume, LinkedIn profile, and Indeed history showed different employment dates. Several positions appeared more than once on one of those platforms. The timeline was difficult to follow.
That did not automatically mean he was being dishonest. Platforms create bad data. People change titles without changing employers. Candidates update one profile and forget another. Any of those explanations could be reasonable. What you do not want to do is assume one of them is true.
Most interviewers see a discrepancy, create a plausible explanation in their heads, and move on. That is dangerous. Discrepancies create questions, and those questions need explicit answers directly from the candidate before someone joins the company.
During what we call the Founder’s Interview, the final interview in our process, we reconstructed his employment timeline together.
We walked through where he had worked, when he had worked there, whether he was an employee or a consultant, and how each position ended. I asked what his former supervisors would say about his performance and exit. I also explained that if we moved forward, we would speak directly with those supervisors, not friends who happened to work alongside him.
He said one company eliminated his team after they dramatically reduced customer acquisition costs and the company shifted toward automation. At another company, an internal realignment favored employees with more seniority.
Both explanations were plausible. More importantly, he offered supervisors from both companies as references. That did not prove everything he said was accurate, yet it gave us a way to verify it.
This is the part of interviewing founders should not delegate.
Technical interviews should be conducted by people who deeply understand the work. If I am interviewing a marketing specialist, automation developer, or finance professional, there are people inside the company better qualified than I am to assess that person’s craft. I need to trust their judgment.
The Founder’s Interview is not another technical screen.
I am watching how someone responds to questions other interviewers may have been too polite to ask. Do their answers become clearer as we talk, or more complicated? Do they take responsibility for outcomes? Can they separate their contribution from the team’s contribution? Are they transparent about the parts of their history that are not flattering?
Candidates rarely volunteer information that could hurt their chances of being hired. That’s human nature, and does not make them bad people.
It also means you have to ask:
What happened in your last position?
How do you know the performance metrics you cited are accurate?
Do you have data to support them?
How much of the result came from your work versus the team’s?
How did you and the company part ways?
What will your former supervisor tell me when I call?
Dig for what is not on the resume.
Avoiding uncomfortable questions does not remove risk. It transfers that risk to the company.
This is also why we tell candidates early that we speak with former supervisors. That’s listed in job ads and stated in each conversation during their review process. The certainty of verification changes the quality of the conversation. Candidates become more precise when they know their claims will be checked. It also discourages people who intend to misrepresent their histories from entering the process.
Reference checks should test specific claims. If a candidate says they drove 80% of a major performance improvement, ask the supervisor. If they say a layoff was unrelated to performance, verify it. Vague questions produce vague answers.
Hiring changes a company one person at a time.
Every person you bring in affects how truthfully the team communicates, how it handles responsibility, and which behaviors become acceptable. Bringing a new person into the company always changes your culture. Delegating the final judgment of cultural alignment means it will change without you deliberately shaping it.
As the founder, you are the keeper of the culture. You should never delegate that responsibility.
Think of a hire that didn't work out. What is the one question you wish you had asked? Reply directly to [email protected] and tell me.
~ Erik
About
Erik J. Olson is the Founder and CEO of Proxa, where he builds and operates multiple marketing agencies focused on predictable, system-driven growth. He has scaled agencies across multiple markets by replacing fragmented execution with structured systems that drive consistent revenue. Erik is the author of Million Dollar Journey and writes The Business of Agency newsletter. He is building Proxa into a $100M platform with a planned private equity exit.