The best hiring decision I’ve watched a small team make wasn’t a clever interview question. It was admitting, out loud, that the role they’d written down wasn’t the job they actually needed done — and rewriting it before a single candidate applied.
Write the job after you know the problem
Small teams have an advantage here that big companies mostly lose: they can define a role around a real, current problem instead of a template from the last time someone had this title. Use it. A job description copied from a bigger company usually hires for a company you aren’t.
A trial project beats five more interviews
Paid, scoped, and short — a real trial project tells you more in four hours than three additional rounds of conversation. It also tells the candidate something true about how you actually work, which is the part interviews are worst at communicating.
- Keep trial projects under a day of paid work — respect the candidate’s time as much as your own
- Give the same project to every finalist so the comparison is fair
- Debrief the result with the candidate either way — it’s a courtesy that costs nothing and builds your reputation
You can’t interview your way to knowing how someone works. You can only watch them work.
None of this scales cleanly to a hundred applicants, and that’s fine — it isn’t meant to. It’s a small-team advantage. Use it while you still have it.
