A Better Way to Interview Candidates
“Chris, we desperately need another Senior Software Engineer.”
vs.
“Our product is behind.” “We’re losing customers.” “Engineering can’t keep up.” “We need someone who can build this.” “Our team is drowning.”
See the difference?
The title comes later. The problem always comes first.
“We need a Senior Software Engineer.”
“We need an AI Engineer.”
“We need a Director of Product.”
Those aren’t business problems. They’re job titles.
The first question every hiring manager should answer is much simpler:
What problem are we actually trying to solve?
That answer should shape everything that follows—from the job description you write to the interview questions you ask and, ultimately, the person you hire.
Take a step back and ask yourself why this role exists.
Maybe revenue has stalled in a key market. Maybe your product team can’t ship features fast enough. Maybe technical debt has slowed development to a crawl, or your infrastructure isn’t scaling the way your business is. Sometimes it’s even simpler than that—your best employee left, and everyone else is trying to absorb the workload.
Whatever the situation, every open position exists because something isn’t working the way it should.
If you can’t clearly define that problem, you’re probably not ready to interview anyone yet.
One of the biggest mistakes I see companies make is debating whether the title should be Software Engineer, Senior Software Engineer, Staff Engineer, or Principal Engineer before agreeing on what success actually looks like.
Titles don’t solve business problems.
Great people do.
Once you know what you’re trying to fix, your interview should almost write itself.
Every question should help you answer one thing:
Can this person solve the problem we’re hiring them to solve?
Too many interviews become conversations about resumes, personality tests, strengths, weaknesses, or where someone hopes to be in five years. Those discussions aren’t worthless, but they often consume valuable time without telling you whether this person can actually improve your business.
Every question should earn its place in the interview.
This is where hiring managers unintentionally set themselves up for disappointment.
Ask someone what they’re looking for, and you’ll often hear, “We’re hoping this person is here for the next five, seven, maybe even ten years.”
But is that how people actually build careers today?
The average employee stays with a company for roughly two to two-and-a-half years. That’s not a criticism of today’s workforce—it’s simply the reality of a labor market that moves faster than it did twenty years ago.
Outside of your parents’ generation, how many people do you know who’ve stayed with the same company for eight or ten years?
Probably not many.
I think every interview should evaluate a candidate across three different time horizons.
Can they solve the immediate problem?
Can they contribute quickly without spending six months figuring everything out?
Once they’re up to speed, will they continue creating value?
Will they take ownership without constant direction?
Do they adapt as priorities change, or do they only perform when every task is clearly defined?
This is where curiosity, independence, and problem-solving become much more valuable than checking every box on a job description.
What impact MIGHT they have? When this person eventually moves on—as most professionals eventually do—what will they have left behind?
Did they build scalable systems?
Did they document their work?
Did they mentor other people?
Did they leave the business stronger than they found it?
I’d take someone who transforms a department in two years over someone who quietly occupies the same chair for ten.
Longevity doesn’t create value.
Impact does.
You only get so much time with a candidate. Every question is an investment, and every minute you spend talking about something that doesn’t improve your hiring decision is a minute you don’t get back.
The companies that consistently make great hires aren’t better because they ask trick questions or have longer interview loops.
They’re better because they’re crystal clear about the problem they’re trying to solve before the first interview is ever scheduled.
Resumes tell you where someone has worked.
Job titles tell you what someone was called.
Neither tells you what they’ll accomplish for your business.
The best hires aren’t remembered because they checked every box on a job description. They’re remembered because they solved problems that mattered.
If you’re hiring software engineers, AI professionals, product leaders, cybersecurity experts, or technical executives, don’t start with the resume.
Start with the business problem.
Once you know exactly what success looks like, finding the right person becomes dramatically easier.
At Averity, that’s how we’ve approached recruiting for decades. Before we ever begin searching for candidates, we work to understand the challenge behind the opening. Because the best hire isn’t the person with the longest resume or the most impressive title—it’s the person who solves the problem that made you hire in the first place.
Business outcomes should drive the hiring process. Skills matter, but they’re simply the tools someone uses to create results. The real question is whether a candidate can solve the business problem your company is facing.
Start by asking what’s not working today. Are projects behind schedule? Is customer satisfaction dropping? Is technical debt slowing development? Define the challenge first, then build the role around solving it.
Too many interviews focus on resumes instead of results. The strongest interviews are built around understanding how a candidate approaches and solves the exact problems your business needs to address.
Long-term thinking is important, but for most roles, a two-to-three-year planning horizon is far more realistic than assuming someone will stay for a decade. Focus on maximizing the impact they’ll create while they’re part of your team.
Written By: Chris Allaire
Why action — not information — builds real leverage
There’s a quiet tax most leaders pay.
It’s hesitation.
In a market drowning in podcasts, newsletters, AI tools, dashboards, and “insights,” the real divider isn’t access to information.
Instead, it’s leadership execution.
Reputation isn’t built in theory.
It’s built by action.
Tony Robbins has said it for decades:
Knowledge is not power.
It’s potential power.
Real power is generated only when knowledge is applied.
Robbins often emphasizes something that elite operators already understand:
Meanwhile, the “I know, I know” mindset leads to stagnation.
We’ve all seen it:
“I know I should make that call.”
“I know we need to recruit proactively.”
“I know we should have that tough conversation.”
“I know we need to move faster.”
However, knowing without doing is disguised procrastination.
And in hiring, leadership, and business — procrastination is expensive.
In recruiting, I see it constantly.
A founder delays outreach because the org chart isn’t perfect.
A CTO waits for “final budget approval.”
A VP hesitates because the job description isn’t perfect yet.
Meanwhile:
The best talent gets proactively recruited by your competition.
The best candidates are getting offers because they add value, not fit a mold.
The companies separating right now aren’t the most informed.
They’re the ones willing to take a chance.
Look at companies that built while still iterating:
None waited for perfect conditions.
They moved.
Then they adjusted.
Then they compounded.
One of the most dangerous phrases in leadership is:
“I already know that.”
If you truly knew it, it would be visible in your behavior.
Applied knowledge creates progress.
Collected knowledge creates comfort.
And comfort feels safe…
until you realize someone else took the shot.
That’s why leadership execution is so visible in outcomes: it turns insight into behavior, and behavior into results.
Taking action doesn’t mean being reckless.
It means:
You don’t need a flawless strategy.
You need momentum and leadership execution that turns momentum into progress.
Momentum is built through consistent, imperfect action.
If you’re building a company, scaling a team, or leading a function, ask:
These aren’t philosophical prompts.
They’re operational diagnostics for leadership execution.
We’re not divided by tools.
Instead, action divides us.
Everyone can access the same information.
Few people act on it.
Execution is everything.
Take the shot.
Momentum is cheaper than regret.
If you’re a CTO, CEO, or VP building in AI, Security, Platform, or Product:
Waiting is not neutral.
It rewards the one with leadership execution — the one who takes action.
If you’re unsure whether to engage, start the conversation.
After all, if you don’t take a shot, you’ll never score.
Written by: Chris Allaire
We’ve entered a market where the ability to think clearly under pressure matters more than where someone worked or what their title says.
Not because experience is irrelevant but because experience without judgment is just memory.
That’s why critical thinking in hiring is now the real separator. In 2026, the companies pulling ahead aren’t chasing the latest tools or hiring the loudest experts. They’re quietly prioritizing something much harder to find:
People who can observe, reason, connect dots, and solve problems when the playbook doesn’t exist.
They don’t just sound experienced. They perform.
Who has the skill beats who has the title.
Not because titles are meaningless but because titles are lagging indicators.
Skills are leading indicators.
According to the World Economic Forum, skill gaps are now the single biggest barrier to business transformation, and upskilling is no longer optional, it’s existential.
So, if you’re hiring, as you’re trying to differentiate everyone, the play is simple:
That’s exactly what critical thinking in hiring is designed to identify.
Hiring ML / AI, Security, Platform Engineering, Robotics, and Product Engineering, titles have become especially unreliable because:
In these environments, the capability gap between candidates can be massive and titles won’t tell you who can actually deliver. Critical thinking will.
Two people can hold the same title and have completely different capability levels yet the market still pretends the title is the baseline.
It’s not.
This is where most hiring processes break, and where the biggest opportunity lives.
Let’s call it out – Everyone is suddenly an “AI expert.”
They’re not.
Here’s how the market breaks down when you apply critical thinking in hiring instead of title assumptions.
At first they sound impressive; however, the confidence fades when you ask “How did you do?” or “How are you going to?
In practice, they brag about prompts.
On paper, they list every model, framework, and library on their resume.
These people are now abundant, and replaceable.
They understand fundamentals.
They use AI as a multiplier, not a crutch.
This is where strong teams are built.
This is the real separation.
These people:
They don’t “use AI.”
They govern it.
This is the tier clients are actually searching for, even if they don’t yet have the language to say it.
Stop writing job descriptions like shopping lists.
Define:
This turns hiring from filtering into forecasting.
Real operators love these questions.
Pretenders disappear.
2026 is the year of Separation
You don’t hire the tools, you hire the TALENT.
You’ve always had.
Now is not the time to change.
PEOPLE hire PEOPLE.
At Averity, we don’t sell resumes, we deliver talent with proof.
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