and What They’re Really Costing Us.

Every leader has a “regret hire.” That one candidate who looked perfect on paper, the interviews were great, the credentials unmatched, and yet, something didn’t click once they joined. It’s not incompetence. It’s not poor judgment.

It’s that tricky, humbling reality of hiring: what looks right in the process doesn’t always play right in reality.

In a recent Ctrl + H Podcast, a leader shared a truth that hits hard: hiring mistakes usually aren’t about a candidate, they come from the hidden assumptions we carry. The myths we believe quietly shape, and sometimes derail, our decisions.

And honestly? Every hiring manager should sit with these insights for a moment.

Because if you’ve ever asked yourself, “Why did this hire not work out?”, what follows might just be the answer.

Myth #1: “Performance is predictable if the hiring process is tight.”

Reality: Performance is contextual, not guaranteed.

We’ve all believed this at some point that if we just tighten interviews, add more assessments, refine every step… we’ll eliminate the risk but reality is different.

As Kaushik says, “A person who thrives in one setup can completely struggle in another.”

That’s not on the person, it’s on the system they walk into. Leadership, autonomy, team chemistry, these define how someone performs far more than their hiring scorecard. You don’t predict performance. You create it through culture.

Myth #2: “Strong coding interviews need complex algorithms.”

Reality: The best interviews test how you think, not how many LeetCode problems you’ve memorized.

In the tech world, we’ve made interviews harder not smarter.

We assume good engineers are those who can reverse a binary tree in 20 minutes. But at Interface.ai, Kaushik does it differently. His teams ask simple questions like designing a podcast scheduling system.

Why? Because clean, extensible, thoughtful code says far more about a person than a memorized algorithm ever could. Technical skill isn’t about how much you know, it’s about how you express yourself in code.

Myth #3: “If someone is struggling, they’re a low performer.”

Reality: Most “low performers” aren’t lazy; they’re disconnected.

This one stings because it’s easy to believe and easy to misjudge. They’ve lost ownership, or their decisions are constantly overridden. They feel unseen. Unheard. Underused. Performance is emotional currency. You can’t demand it from someone who’s stopped believing their work matters.

The real question for leaders isn’t “Why are they failing?” It’s “What made them disconnect?”

Myth #4: “Resume screening is HR’s job.”

Reality: Strong hiring teams co-own the process.

At high-performing organizations, engineering leaders don’t leave resume screening to chance. They sit with recruiters, review 20–30 profiles, and build a common lens for spotting talent. Because if HR screens in isolation, you hire faster but not necessarily smarter.

When hiring managers co-own the process, everyone starts recognizing what “great” looks like for that specific team. That alignment is gold.

Myth #5: “Top talent is obvious in 10 minutes.”

Reality: You can, but it’s not about flash. It’s about patterns.

Sometimes, yes you just know. But only when you know what to look for. The real markers of top talent aren’t shiny titles.

It’s stability - did they stay long enough to see a project through?

It’s growth - were they trusted with bigger responsibilities over time?

It’s curiosity - did they build with intention, or just follow instructions?

Top talent leaves traces of thought everywhere. You just have to look closely enough.

Myth #6: “Technically brilliant hires never fail.”

Reality: Misalignment kills faster than incompetence.

This is the one that gets leaders most often. A technically strong engineer can still fail, not for lack of skill, but for lack of fit.

Kaushik tells a story of an engineer who came from a “documentation-first” culture, a world where every line of code needed an approved RFQ. When they joined a faster, more risk-driven environment, they froze. It wasn’t a performance issue. It was a context mismatch.

And that’s the real learning: Hiring isn’t about skill alignment, it’s about expectation alignment.

The Real Lesson

Every hiring “mistake” carries a quiet truth: it wasn’t the candidate that failed, it was the assumption.

We assume performance is predictable. We assume culture is static. We assume rigor guarantees outcomes.

But hiring is more human than that. It’s a blend of empathy, clarity, and courage the courage to ask:

“Are we hiring for who we need today, or who we think we want?”

From the Podcast

Episode: The Hiring Mistake Every Leader Regrets

Guest: Kaushik Chandreshekhar

If you lead teams, hire talent, or simply care about building workplaces where people thrive, this episode is a masterclass in unlearning. Because at BotFriday AI, we believe the future of work isn’t powered by perfect hires, it’s powered by better human understanding.

Check out BotFriday AI and see how technology can help you hire smarter, lead deeper, and build teams that truly perform.