Never Hire “Nice”

Me: What did you think of the interviewee?

Recruiting leader: They seem nice.

Me: Do not hire them.

Leader: [confused look]

Me: Nice people give you nice results. Is that what you want?

Before you decide I’m a total jerk, let me explain.

An interview is a half hour of someone’s best spiel. What they do exceptionally. How they do it. Whether they understand what actually matters in the role. In thirty minutes, anyone worth considering leaves a real impression. Positive or negative. Either way, obvious.

If “nice” is one of your first descriptors, treat it the way you’d treat someone calling your best work “fine.” It is the word people reach for when nothing else stuck.

To be very clear. We want great collaborators. Empathic colleagues. True partners.

“Nice” is not the same thing.

Here’s the blind spot. Leaders mistake likability for evidence of capability.

It happens for an understandable reason. A candidate who agrees easily, laughs at the right moments, and never pushes back makes the interview feel good. That feeling gets filed as a judgment about them. Most of the time it is a judgment about how comfortable you were, and comfort in a half-hour conversation tells you almost nothing about what someone does when the work gets hard, the deadline moves, or the customer is furious.

The same blind spot shows up after the hire. I worked alongside a leader who, about a year in, might as well have had the last name “What Does She Do Anyway,” because that was what people said every time her first name came up. That’s the part your team already sees.

If you run lean like most organizations, each hire counts. This is the first filter I give leaders, before the references and the second round.

What are my top three descriptors for this person?

If one of them is “nice,” you have just predicted your future.