It’s not them. It’s you.

I used to think I had a hiring problem.

What I actually had was a clarity problem.

Last week we discussed how to screen for great technical candidates in an interview. But the truth is, by the time you’re in the interview, the damage is often already done.

Most hiring problems start long before the interview — when you haven’t done the real work of defining what you actually need.

I’ve learned this lesson the hard way, multiple times.

Before Lemon.io, I launched two other companies. 

Actually… I wouldn’t even call them companies — because a “company” implies revenue, and we didn’t have any.

In the first case, I hired a dev agency, but they built my site on an outdated tech stack. The moment we tried scaling SEO, it crumbled.

For my second company, I found a guy with solid credentials. Gave him equity. A salary. Six months later, still no prototype.

He always had explanations — blockers, bugs, complexity. I didn’t know how to evaluate his progress, and I didn’t even realize we were spinning our wheels until it was too late.

At the time, I thought I was just unlucky. In hindsight, I realize I had no idea what I was hiring for. It was my fault for not putting in the work.

Learn from my mistakes.

Here are three questions to ask before you even start talking to candidates.

Do you actually need to hire?

Think about the role you want to hire for, and ask yourself:

• Can this be automated? 

• Outsourced? 

• Delegated?

Hiring is expensive. It should be a last resort — not your default move.

When growth was skyrocketing at Lemon.io, we ballooned from 30 to 70 employees in under a year. 

And for a while, it felt like progress.

Until growth slowed. 

I realized we hired people into roles we didn’t fully understand. 

We didn’t know how to onboard them. We didn’t have systems to support them. And worse, we didn’t have a way to make them successful.

That was on me.

Eventually, we had to lay people off. Not because we ran out of money — but because we made bad decisions. We didn’t clarify what we needed before we brought people in. 

That was my biggest mistake.

How can you be as specific as possible?

Before interviewing technical talent, try answering these questions to narrow down the specifics of the role you’re hiring for:

1. What kind of engineer are you really looking for?

Are you building a product that requires deep backend complexity? Or something that needs frontend polish?

“Full-stack” is vague. Define the edge you care about most.

2. Do you need a specialist or a generalist?

If you’re in a niche industry, look for depth. If you’re a small startup, you probably need someone scrappy who can figure things out without hand-holding.

3. Are you hiring an independent contributor, or a future leader?

If you want someone to grow into a manager, screen for leadership, vision, and whether they elevate the team around them — not just their individual coding skills.

Then establish your dealbreakers. This one seems obvious, but it’s often skipped. 

You don’t want to figure out halfway through the process that your dream candidate won’t do video calls, or hates working in a team.

For us, some of our deal-breakers now include:

• Willingness to communicate over video

• Clear spoken English (we’re remote and global)

• A collaborative attitude — no divas

• The ability to explain what they’re doing and why

If someone can’t meet those criteria, it doesn’t matter how technically brilliant they are.

Finally, create an evaluation rubric, and make sure everyone on your hiring committee is familiar with precisely what you’re looking for in a candidate. Here’s an example:

REMEMBER — when you’re vague on your specifics, you get vague results.

How can you make the interview process a great experience — for them?

You want each and every candidate to walk away from this experience thinking:

“Damn. That was a great interview process.”

Why?

Because even if someone’s not a fit today, they might be tomorrow. Or they might know someone who is. 

Or they might even become a customer.

We’ve built a highly organized and structured process, created rubrics, and trained interviewers to be thoughtful and fair. 

People who interview for us feel important and well cared-for.

It’s more work. But it pays off — both in better hires and in reputation.

—

When you hire well, everything in your company gets easier.

When you hire wrong, everything gets harder.

So take the time to get it right — before you post the job.

–Aleksandr

P.S. — My team created a detailed guide for hiring software engineers. Hit reply if you’d like a copy.

Catch you next Sunday!