Hiring has become more sophisticated
Most organisations now use some combination of structured interviews, reference checks, technical assessments, psychometric tools and stakeholder input before making an appointment.
And yet, despite all of that, hiring mistakes still happen.
Sometimes the person who looked strongest on paper, interviewed exceptionally well and appeared to have all the right experience is the person who struggles most once they are actually in the role.
When that happens, organisations often ask:
How did we not see this?
Increasingly, I think that is the wrong question.
The issue is not always that somebody made a poor hiring decision.
Sometimes the problem is that the recruitment process simply did not have access to all of the information that later became important.
A CV tells us where someone has been
CVs remain an important part of recruitment.
They tell us about experience, qualifications, career progression and previous responsibilities.
They help us answer questions such as:
- Can this person do the technical components of the role?
- Have they operated at this level before?
- Have they worked in a similar industry or environment?
All useful information.
But a CV is primarily historical.
It tells us what someone has done.
It cannot fully tell us how that same person will operate inside a different organisation, under a different leader, with a different team, different pressures and different expectations.
And that distinction matters.
An interview tells us how someone presents
Interviews give us another important layer.
A good interview allows us to explore experience, judgement, communication, motivation and behaviour in much greater depth.
But interviews are still controlled environments.
Candidates prepare.
They anticipate likely questions.
They select examples that demonstrate them at their best.
That is not deception. It is simply the nature of recruitment.
An interview tells us a great deal about how someone thinks and communicates when asked to reflect on previous situations.
What it cannot completely replicate is the environment they are about to enter.
Real pressure does not arrive as a behavioural interview question.
Conflict does not come with five minutes to structure an answer.
Ambiguity rarely provides three possible responses and asks someone to select the best one.
The workplace is messier than the recruitment process.
References tell us how someone performed somewhere else
Reference checking provides another valuable source of information.
It can help validate experience and provide insight into how someone has previously performed, interacted and led.
But references are also contextual.
Someone may have been extremely successful in one organisation because the leadership style, culture, structure and expectations suited the way they naturally operated.
Move that same person into a very different environment and the outcome can change.
That does not necessarily make them a poor employee.
It may mean the relationship between the person, the role and the organisation is different.
That is the part I believe we still need to understand better.
The problem is shifting from quantity to quality
This question is becoming even more important in the current recruitment market.
Recent Robert Half research found that 98% of New Zealand employers surveyed were experiencing difficulty identifying standout candidates. High application volumes, AI-generated CVs and limited visibility into soft skills and cultural fit were among the challenges employers reported.
Robert Walters' 2026 research tells a similar story. Eighty-one per cent of New Zealand employers reported experiencing skills shortages, while unsuitable applications were identified as one of the country's biggest hiring barriers. Their conclusion was particularly telling: the challenge is increasingly shifting from attracting applicants to securing the right talent.
That distinction matters.
More applicants do not necessarily create more certainty.
Sometimes they simply create more information to sort through.
A strong candidate is not automatically the right appointment
One of the lessons I have learned over more than 20 years working in People & Culture is that highly capable people can still struggle in the wrong environment.
Consider two organisations appointing someone into essentially the same leadership role.
One organisation is entrepreneurial, fast-moving and comfortable with ambiguity.
The other is highly structured, heavily governed and expects consultation before significant decisions are made.
The same candidate could thrive in one and become deeply frustrated in the other.
Or consider a leader who has previously succeeded because they were surrounded by an experienced team and a highly supportive manager.
Place that person into a turnaround environment requiring difficult conversations, rapid decisions and significant resistance to change, and different behaviours may emerge.
That is why I think we need to move beyond asking:
“Is this a good candidate?”
and ask:
“How is this person likely to operate in this role, under this leadership, inside this organisation?”
Those are not the same question.
What should organisations be trying to understand?
Before making a significant appointment, I think there are several areas worth exploring beyond experience and presentation.
- How is this person likely to respond when priorities collide?
- What happens when the environment becomes ambiguous?
- How do they typically respond to challenge, resistance or feedback?
- What conditions allow them to perform at their best?
- What conditions are likely to reduce their effectiveness?
- How might their leadership approach interact with the existing executive team?
- Are there behavioural patterns that would be worth testing more deeply before appointment?
None of these questions provides certainty.
Nor should that be the goal.
People are complex. Organisations change. No assessment process can predict every future behaviour.
But greater uncertainty does not mean we should settle for less information.
Better information, not perfect prediction
There is sometimes a temptation in recruitment to search for the tool or process that will finally eliminate hiring risk.
I do not believe such a tool exists.
Nor do I think it should.
Hiring is ultimately a judgement about human beings, and human judgement should remain central to it.
The opportunity is not to replace that judgement.
It is to give it more relevant information to work with.
That may mean combining what we already do well — interviews, references, technical assessment, recruiter knowledge and leadership judgement — with a deeper understanding of the behavioural and performance factors that could influence success in the specific environment the candidate is entering.
Because the most expensive hiring surprises are often not contained in the CV.
They are discovered later, when pressure increases, relationships become more complicated and the realities of the organisation begin to test how someone actually operates.
Perhaps the next evolution in recruitment is therefore not another way of asking candidates what they have done.
It is finding better ways to understand:
What might happen when they get here?
Nikki Silvester is the founder of Rocket Develops
