The Hiring Razor: One Question That Stops Bad Hires Before They Happen

Before we get started…

My partners and I just opened enrollment for business owners who want a Scalable Operating System installed before the end of the year.

Our goal is to get you unstuck and out of the “day-to-day” before the holiday craziness takes over, finish 2026 strong...

…and set up to make 2027 your best year ever.

Click here to see how it works.

Ok, onto this week's article…

Nothing eats up margin faster than a bad hire.

So now, anytime someone on my team tells me we need to make a hire, I ask one question back:

I call this question the “Hiring Razor” because it cuts straight to the core of why (or why not) this role is actually needed.

This one question stops virtually all bad hires, because it reminds everyone that more humans completing more tasks only helps if those tasks actually grow the business.

Specifically, it stops the three most common types of bad hires…

This is the hire you make because work is piling up.

Somebody needs to post on social.
Somebody needs to clean up the CRM.
Somebody needs to "own" the newsletter.

So you hire a “somebody.”

But nobody stopped to ask whether that work needed doing in the first place. They just say:

…and you’re stuck trying to decide if adding that extra person to your payroll will be worth it.

But when you ask the Hiring Razor:

…you’re likely to hear one of two replies:

If the answer is, "Inbound leads are at 40 a month, the target is 75, and social is where our best leads come from, so by posting more our inbound leads will be back on target…"

…then great! Make the hire.

You know the role will have a positive ROI, because you know the metric they’ll be impacting.

But if the answer is, "Uhhhhhh… I'm not sure, I just think we should be posting more because social media is important and our competitors post more than we do…"

…then congratulations! You just saved yourself (and an unsuspecting employee) a lot of wasted money and wasted time.

This is the hire your team asks for when they're overwhelmed.

For example, let’s say your operations manager is drowning, things are slipping, and she says, "I just need an assistant."

I get it. You want to take care of your people, and saying no feels cruel.

But a helper hired to "take stuff off her plate" usually ends up creating MORE work, because now she's doing her job AND managing someone else's tasks because even she’s not clear what she wants her assistant to do.

So ask her a version of the Hiring Razor question:

Now you get a real answer.

Something like, "On-time delivery is at 82% and our target is 95%, because I spend half my week rescheduling jobs."

Now you know exactly who to hire: a scheduler who owns on-time delivery.

In other words, a specialist who can own an outcome, not a helper who replicates a to-do list in human form.

And sometimes the answer shows you that you don't need a hire at all. You need a scheduling tool, or a playbook, or three fewer meetings on her calendar.

Either way, you solved her actual problem instead of handing her a bandaid-shaped time bomb.

This is the hire you make when you wish you had more of someone.

Sometimes it's a unicorn:

That person doesn't exist (and if they did, you couldn't afford them).

Sometimes it's a clone:

Both hires fail for the same reason: Nobody can say what success looks like, so nobody can tell whether the new hire is succeeding.

The Hiring Razor forces you to pick:

In other words…

"We need another Sarah…" becomes:

"Customer retention is at 78% and needs to be at 90%, and Sarah's the only one who knows how to save an at-risk account. So let’s get another Account Manager focused on retention to take some of that load off of Sarah."

Now you know what the role is FOR and the ROI it should deliver post-hire. And best of all, Sarah can help you train whoever fills it.

This works for backfills, too.

When someone quits, ask which metrics slip if the seat stays empty. When you isolate the metrics that person impacted, you realize you might need to hire 2 or 3 people to replace the “unicorn” who’s leaving you…

…especially when you realize that the reason they’re quitting is because they were burned out from doing 2-3 jobs at the same time.

Once you know which metric the hire is supposed to move, you can stop asking generic questions like "What's your biggest weakness?" and start asking about the number.

Ask these in the first interview, before you ever get to culture or comp:

Then listen for how they answer:

A strong candidate answers with numbers. "Retention was at 71% when I started. We got it to 88% in about a year, mostly by calling every new account in its first 30 days."

A weak candidate answers only with tasks. "I managed the account team, ran the weekly check-ins, and handled escalations."

Both might be great people, but only one of them has moved the number you need moved.

⚡️ Action Step: Pick the next hire on your list (or the one someone on your team keeps asking for) and ask the Hiring Razor question: "What's the one metric that's currently off target that will be on target as a result of this hire?" If nobody can answer it in one sentence, hold the hire until somebody can.

Give it a shot and let me know how it goes…

-Ryan

Ryan Deiss
Co-Founder and CEO, The Scalable Company

P.S. This question only works if everyone can see the metrics, the targets, and who owns each one. When those live in your head (or in 6 different spreadsheets), every hire becomes a guess.

That's why the first thing we do with every client is install a custom "operating system" so the business runs, grows, and actually pays you…without depending on you for everything.

Click here to see how it works.