7 Signs Your New Hire Is Full of It

Fake talent can sink your company. Here’s how to sniff it out.

Hiring talent that doesn’t live up to the claims made on a resume and in an interview can be a company killer. This has happened to me, several times over. It has happened to friends and colleagues. It could happen to anyone. In fact, it recently happened to a founder who wrote in:

I just let several people go. Most of these terminations were due to the employee not living up to what I thought I was getting when I hired them. How do I spot candidates who aren’t as talented as they appear to be?

None of us is immune to making hiring mistakes, both in the hard skills area and the soft compatibility area. In fact, one of the primary reasons this mistake is made is because we think we’re never going to make it.

We all like to think we’re good judges of character, and unless the role we’re hiring for demands skills that are way out of our own scope (i.e. a non-tech founder hiring a technical resource), we also like to think we know enough to qualify candidates for the role.

I’ll take the risk of patting myself on the back and state that I am an excellent judge of character. It’s one of my strengths. I can usually figure people out in about five minutes, like 95 percent of the time…