Who this is for

This is not a claim about hiring in general. For plenty of roles there is genuine applicant surplus, the cost of a false positive is high, and rigorous screening is correct.

It applies where two conditions come together.

Leverage

The outcome of the role varies enormously with who fills it: an impact hire, in the plain sense that one person materially moves what happens. The founding engineer, the first designer, the person who opens a market, the person who re-energises a team. These are genuine properties of some roles, not job titles. Plenty of senior-titled positions in saturated functions have modest leverage, and plenty of high-leverage roles carry unremarkable titles.

Optionality

The people capable of filling it have alternatives, and a current situation they're not desperate to leave. The most common source of optionality is career equity: accumulated, portable reputation, a track record that precedes them, a network that surfaces opportunities unasked. But it isn't the only source. Scarce capability produces optionality even before reputation catches up: the unknown high-performer is usually being courted internally, and has a trajectory they would be giving up to leave.

Both, together

Leverage without optionality is ordinary hiring with higher stakes, and screening hard is correct. Optionality without leverage means the role probably doesn't justify the effort this argument requires.

Read the full argument