Ethan Evans

In the interview, you also get information.

Basically, in the interview, I'm getting enough information to know, are you worth making all those calls, right?

Do I see the signs that you've done good work?

You can explain your work.

You face hard decisions.

So I was often hiring leaders.

A big question to your point about hard feedback is,

have you ever had to let someone go walk me through that?

Because it's sort of a watershed moment for a leader.

Have they sat down across from someone and said, I'm sorry, but today is your last day with our company and dealt with that because it's the ultimate hard message.

So, um, it risks the person freaking out.

Uh, you know, I, I, um,

I remember an employee that we terminated who started shattering things at his desk.

And fear of that reaction means it's very hard.

So if people have gone through that, it's one big signal.

So I would get some of those signals in the interview, but then the final follow up was, are they really that good?

I remember at least one case early in my career at Amazon where we were discussing the candidate at the end of the day and we realized we had missed something.

And I called the candidate at his hotel and said, hey, we missed something.

Can I come to your hotel and ask you a few more questions?

Sadly, we didn't end up hiring the candidate.