Be Someone People Want to Build With
I was interviewing candidates recently, and it reminded me of something I think we get wrong about hiring.
We tend to believe hiring is a meritocracy of credentials.
The best resume wins.
The most experience wins.
The person who’s done the exact thing before wins.
Sometimes that’s true.
A lot of times, it isn’t.
In my most recent hiring process, I interviewed a candidate who looked fantastic on paper. Great experience. Polished. Confident. Strong interview. There was no doubt in my mind she could do the job.
And yet, as the conversation went on, something felt absent.
Not wrong.
Not concerning.
Just...missing.
She didn’t ask many questions.
She wasn’t particularly curious about the company, the team, or how we approached our work. She wasn’t exploring what success looked like in the role or trying to understand the problems she’d be helping solve.
Now, before we go any further, I want to acknowledge something important.
Hiring decisions are made by humans.
Humans are wonderfully imperfect signal-processing machines.
Maybe she was curious and simply didn’t show it.
Maybe she was nervous.
Maybe she’d done so many interviews she knew exactly what she wanted to communicate and didn’t want to get off script.
All of those things are possible.
But that’s exactly what makes hiring so fascinating.
Most people think hiring is about qualifications.
In reality, hiring is also about perception.
It’s about the story another human starts telling themselves about what it might be like to work with you.
And that story begins forming long before anyone finishes reviewing your resume.
The Candidate Who Surprised Me
The person I ultimately hired was younger.
Less experienced.
If you lined up the resumes side by side, many people would probably have chosen the other candidate.
But she did something that immediately caught my attention.
She asked thoughtful questions.
Not performative questions.
Not questions she pulled from a LinkedIn carousel titled “Twenty-Five Questions to Ask in Every Interview.”
Real questions.
Questions that demonstrated she had done her research.
Questions that showed she was trying to understand how the team operated.
Questions that helped her imagine how she could contribute.
As we talked, I could see her learning in real time.
Connecting dots.
Testing ideas.
Following her curiosity.
And perhaps most importantly, I could see coachability.
That word doesn’t appear on many resumes.
You can’t earn a certification in it.
Yet it’s one of the most valuable traits I’ve seen in high performers throughout my career.
Because eventually everyone encounters something they haven’t seen before.
Markets change.
Technology changes.
Customers change.
Teams change.
The people who thrive aren’t always the people who know the most.
They’re often the people who learn the fastest.
What Hiring Managers Are Really Evaluating
Psychologists have long studied decision-making and found something both fascinating and slightly uncomfortable:
Humans often make decisions emotionally before they justify them logically.
We like to imagine hiring managers sitting behind spreadsheets assigning weighted scores to qualifications.
Reality is messier.
Underneath the surface, people are often asking questions like:
Can I trust this person?
Will they take feedback?
Can they adapt?
Will they strengthen the team?
Would I want to solve difficult problems with them?
Would I enjoy spending forty hours a week working alongside them?
Those questions aren’t irrational.
They’re deeply human.
Most work is collaborative.
Most jobs involve ambiguity.
Most success requires communication, adaptation, and problem-solving with other people.
When a hiring manager interviews you, they’re not only evaluating whether you can do the job.
They’re imagining what it might feel like to work with you.
Curiosity Is an Underrated Career Superpower
One of the strongest signals a candidate can send is curiosity.
Curiosity tells me you’re paying attention.
Curiosity tells me you’re still growing.
Curiosity tells me you’re willing to learn before assuming.
Curiosity tells me you don’t believe you already have all the answers.
Ironically, the most confident people I’ve met often ask the best questions.
They aren’t trying to prove they’re the smartest person in the room.
They’re trying to understand the room.
That’s a very different energy.
And frankly, it’s one that makes people want to work with you.
The Bias We Don’t Always See
There’s another layer worth acknowledging.
Humans naturally gravitate toward familiarity.
Psychologists call this affinity bias.
We tend to like people who remind us of ourselves.
People who communicate the way we communicate.
People who think the way we think.
That’s why structured hiring processes matter.
It’s why diversity matters.
It’s why self-awareness matters.
Even as I reflect on my own hiring decision, I have to admit I could be wrong about some of the signals I interpreted.
Maybe the more experienced candidate would have been incredibly coachable.
Maybe her confidence reflected competence rather than rigidity.
Maybe I was reading too much into a lack of questions.
That’s possible.
Good hiring requires humility, too.
Because hiring is rarely about certainty.
It’s about probability.
It’s about making the best decision you can with incomplete information.
The Question That Changed Everything
When I compared both candidates, I found myself asking a surprisingly simple question:
Who am I more excited to help develop?
Who am I more excited to build with?
Not who is finished.
Not who knows everything.
Who is still growing?
Who is still curious?
Who has the potential to become even better a year from now?
The answer became clear.
Stop Performing. Start Connecting.
One thing I’ve noticed over and over again is that interviews can make people disappear.
Someone walks into an interview determined to say all the right things.
The perfect answers.
The perfect stories.
The perfect version of themselves.
And somewhere along the way, their personality vanishes.
Their curiosity vanishes.
Their thought process vanishes.
Their humanity vanishes.
The conversation becomes a performance.
The candidates who stand out are often the ones who manage to stay human.
Not overly casual.
Not unprofessional.
Just authentic.
Comfortable enough to ask questions.
Comfortable enough to think out loud.
Comfortable enough to admit what they don’t know.
Comfortable enough to let their natural strengths show up.
And here’s the funny thing:
That level of comfort usually doesn’t come from talent.
It comes from practice.
Athletes practice.
Actors rehearse.
Pilots use simulators.
Yet job seekers are expected to walk into one of the most important conversations of their lives and somehow perform perfectly on the first attempt.
That’s not how humans work.
Practice doesn’t make you robotic.
Good practice does the opposite.
It reduces anxiety.
It builds confidence.
And confidence creates space for the real you to show up.
The thoughtful you.
The curious you.
The version of you that asks great questions.
The version of you people can actually imagine working with.
The Thing People Remember
At the end of the day, most hiring managers aren’t looking for a script.
They’re looking for a person.
A person they can trust.
A person they can teach.
A person they can learn from.
A person they can build something with.
If you’re early in your career, stop worrying about being the most experienced person in the room.
That goal is impossible for most of us anyway.
There will always be someone older.
Someone more accomplished.
Someone with a longer resume.
Instead, focus on becoming someone people want to build with.
Be prepared.
Do your research.
Ask thoughtful questions.
Show people how you think.
Show them how you learn.
Show them you’re capable of growth.
Because the best hiring managers aren’t only evaluating who you are today.
They’re trying to imagine who you’ll become tomorrow.
And sometimes the most compelling candidate isn’t the one who knows everything.
It’s the one who still wants to learn.
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