The first time I had to explain this client’s interview format to a candidate, I didn’t believe in it myself.

Fifteen minutes. One interview. That’s the whole first round.

I can’t tell you which client or which role — this one’s staying confidential — but I can tell you it’s a C-level search, and I can tell you the format, because it’s the most interesting part of this one.

The interviewer isn’t tough. The format is. Fifteen minutes, no fluff, and by the end they’ve got their answer: can you think fast, build rapport, and boil your experience down into short stories that actually connect to the job.

At the C-level, that’s a different kind of hard. There’s fifteen-plus years to choose from. More to leave out. More instinct to let the resume — the titles, the logos — do the talking instead of doing the work yourself.

When we first started prepping candidates for it, we had the same reaction they did: how does anyone get properly assessed in 15 minutes?

Then we watched enough of them go through it to see the pattern.

Time pressure doesn’t punish good candidates. It reveals them.

One candidate made it look easy. She’d taken a growth-stage company from a fraction of its size to $200M — and she also had Meta and Google on her resume, the kind of names most people would lead with on instinct.

She didn’t lead with them.

We got aligned first on what the role actually needed. Once we did, she chose the growth-stage story instead — the less flashy logo, the one that mapped directly onto the job in front of her. Ninety seconds, no wasted words, exactly the story the interviewer needed to hear.

That’s the actual skill. Not having a great story. Choosing the right one under pressure, even when a more impressive-sounding one is sitting right there. She had both: the brand names on paper, and a story built for the room.

It’s the same instinct behind speed networking. You get 10 minutes with someone before you rotate to the next table. You’re not building a relationship in that window — you’re deciding fast whether it’s worth a follow-up. The 15-minute interview runs on the same logic. It’s not the whole evaluation. It’s the filter.

Or think about the contractor who shows up at your house already knowing what he’s there to do. He doesn’t explain himself for 20 minutes. He looks at the job, tells you what he’s going to do, and starts digging or framing. No performance. Just competence, moving fast.

That’s what this interview is actually testing. Not whether you can talk for 15 minutes — whether you know your work well enough to say it in 90 seconds.

If you’re the hiring manager reading this: a short, structured first round isn’t a shortcut — it’s a filter, and often a better one than an hour-long conversation that wanders. If your team’s first interviews are running long and you’re still unsure who to move forward, the problem might not be the candidates. It might be that nobody, including the interviewer, is being forced to get to the point.

If you’re the candidate reading this: don’t walk into a compressed interview hoping your resume — or your most impressive-sounding job — does the talking. Get clear on what the role actually needs, then build two stories around that, 60 to 90 seconds each. Sometimes the right story isn’t the one with the biggest name attached. Rehearse until it’s tight. If you know your work, this format works in your favor. If you don’t, 15 minutes is exactly long enough to find that out.

Be brief. Be bright. Be done. Then let the next round go deeper.

If you’ve got a search where the first interview isn’t telling you anything useful, hit reply — happy to compare notes on what’s actually working right now.

Two weeks ago, a candidate joined one of our searches — full-time job, family, a life outside of this process.

Right now, he’s our frontrunner. Not because he’s the most qualified person in the pipeline. Because he shows up.

Every time we’ve asked for a 30-minute window, he’s found one. He’s heading into round three this week. Meanwhile, one of his competitors — stronger resume, better pedigree — asked to push his interview because it landed on his regular pickleball morning.

I’m not making that up. Pickleball beat a job that would’ve been a real step up for him.

He wants it more than he wants to protect his calendar. That’s the whole edge.

I see the hiring-manager version of this constantly, too. We have a client who says he wants to hire fast. Last month we had a strong candidate ready to go, and he needed four days to “prepare” — turned out he had a board meeting that week and couldn’t think about anything else until it was over.

Come on. You can find 30 minutes. And here’s the part hiring managers keep missing: your board likes hearing you’re interviewing. A board watching you scramble to fill a critical seat does not want “we’re still figuring out our calendar.” They want to hear you’re moving — and better yet, that you’re about to hire.

Every reschedule costs more than the day it moves. The candidate loses momentum, we redo the coordination work, and the “fast” hire slides another week.

Emergencies happen. Fine. But if hiring is actually a priority, your calendar will say so. If it isn’t, no amount of “we need to move fast” will make it true.

Here’s the other half, and it’s mostly on hiring managers: you have to act on what’s in front of you.

If a resume isn’t perfect but something about the candidate caught your eye, get on the phone. What’s on paper is never the whole story — the thing you’re actually looking for is often the thing they didn’t think to write down.

We had a client pause a search because they had “enough candidates in the pipeline.” Then the pipeline went quiet — people took other offers, timelines slipped — and suddenly they needed to fill the role yesterday. Never stop interviewing until someone has signed. Have a plan B, C, and D. Not because your top candidate isn’t good — because momentum is what actually gets roles filled, and it dies the moment you stop moving.

If you’re the candidate: make the time.
If you’re the hiring manager: make the time.

Everything else in a search is negotiable. That one isn’t.

If your pipeline just went quiet, or you’re a candidate stuck waiting on someone else’s calendar — hit reply.

Four months ago, I called a candidate about a C-level search and he laughed before I finished my sentence.

Yesterday, I called him again. Same role, better title, bigger scope, more money.

He still said no.

I can’t tell you which search this is — too easy to spoil for the people involved. But I can tell you what the hiring company wants: people who came up through the top labs. Anthropic, OpenAI, that tier.

The problem was never the target list. It’s the pitch.

The CEO believes the company is the prize. In his mind, if a candidate isn’t dying to join, something’s wrong with the candidate — not the offer.

That first call, four months ago, the candidate spelled out exactly what was missing. Title was one of four things. So the company fixed three of them and came back yesterday with more money and a better seat.

Still a no. Turns out he wants a rocket ship, and he wants to run it from San Francisco. Why would he fly out to some outpost every other week when he can build the same career without leaving home?

Here’s the part that stings for a CEO who thinks his company sells itself: outside your own building, you’re not special. You might be the biggest name at your local gym. Step into a bigger gym and you find out fast where you actually rank.

Companies like his are a dime a dozen in San Francisco, New York, Austin. The candidates he wants know it. They have options and zero urgency.

If you’re the hiring manager (or the CEO) reading this: get in front of A-players yourself. Don’t show up in round three to rubber-stamp a maybe — I’ll set the calls, but you make the case for why this specific bet is worth the risk. Expect to lose some anyway. Change the pitch, change the approach, keep swinging. Nobody said this would be easy, least of all at the top of the market.

If you’re the candidate reading this: same lesson, different angle. If you’re punching above your weight right now — no brand-name degree, no marquee logo on the resume — the fix isn’t a better story. It’s better performance. Put your head down, get great at the job in front of you, and the market eventually notices. It’s slower than a rebrand. It also actually works.

That candidate who laughed at me? He’s not being difficult. He’s just not impressed. Right now, neither is anyone else worth hiring. If your search feels stuck for the same reason, hit reply — I’d bet we’ve seen your exact version of this.

A VP-level Ops search. Five strong candidates in the pipeline. Then, radio silence.

Turned out the C-level sponsor was in the middle of a mini re-org at his company — real reason, real disruption. But he never told us. We were left to guess: is this role still open? Did priorities change? Is this still moving at all?

Here’s the thing about hiring — everyone assumes the candidate is the one under the microscope. The hiring manager asks the questions, weighs the answers, decides who’s worth a second look. Candidates get feedback (sometimes), and if they want to push back, they’ve got Glassdoor. A review the company reads, shrugs at, and keeps hiring around.

What nobody talks about: hiring managers give off red flags too. Recruiters are the only ones who see all of them.

In this case, the red flag wasn’t indecision. It was silence. The sponsor had a legitimate reason to go quiet — but “legitimate” doesn’t pause the market. Candidates in a live process don’t wait around for your internal reasons. They just notice you went dark, and start taking other calls.

It took his second-in-command stepping in to get the search back on track. By then, we’d lost 2 of our top 5 candidates to other offers. Good people, gone, because nobody picked up the phone for a few weeks.

If you’re the hiring manager (or sponsor): a shakeup on your end doesn’t have to end the search — but it has to be communicated. A two-line email (”things are in flux, still committed, give me two weeks”) costs you nothing. Silence costs you your best candidates.

If you’re the candidate: silence is still an answer. If a process goes quiet without explanation, don’t assume it means nothing. Keep other conversations warm. The people who wait it out politely are usually the ones who lose the offer to someone who didn’t.

Nobody will want the hire more than the person who actually wants it. Silence doesn’t read as busy. It reads as “not that important” — even when that’s not true.

If you’re mid-search and it’s starting to go quiet, hit reply — I’ll tell you straight whether it’s a red flag or just a rough patch.

We had a VP of Operations search in a great spot. Then the client added a new person to the hiring panel, and we were back to square one.

My first reaction was frustration. New voice, new opinions, more explaining, more re-alignment. We’d have to walk this person through everything we’d already covered with the rest of the panel.

Then I realized something: this wasn’t a setback. It was a gift.

A Fresh Set of Eyes Forces You to Get Sharper

Re-explaining a search from scratch is annoying. But it also makes you defend your thinking out loud, to someone who wasn’t in the room for any of the earlier conversations.

That’s exactly what happened here. Instead of scheduling another alignment call, we built one scorecard: every candidate, their status, and clear notes on where things stood. That single document did the work a meeting would have. It forced us to get specific on the criteria, and any confusion on the panel surfaced right there on the page instead of in a room later.

The search didn’t slow down. It got more attention than it had in weeks.

If You Can’t Explain It Simply, You Might Not Understand It

Here’s the bigger lesson underneath all of this.

Sometimes you’re working hard on something, but if you can’t explain it in a simple email or a quick status update, you probably don’t understand it as well as you think you do.

Your work should be so buttoned up that you could explain it to a stranger walking by.

That’s the bar. Not “I know what I’m doing.” Can you say it out loud, in plain language, and have it make sense to someone with zero context?

Solving Problems Is the Job. Explaining Them Is Half of It.

Work hard on your problems. A problem isn’t an obstacle — it’s an opportunity to show your work.

You weren’t hired to avoid problems. You were hired to solve them. And the people who get really good at their jobs aren’t just good at solving problems, they’re good at explaining the solution to someone else.

That’s what companies pay Ramp Talent for. Not because they can’t hire on their own. They hire us because they want a professional handling something that matters, and professionals show their work.

Same Rule Applies on Both Sides of the Table

If you’re a hiring manager, get really good at hiring the best people.

If you’re a candidate, get really good at interviewing and picking the right company.

Simple. Not easy.

A candidate I placed two years ago got a call last Friday. By the time we talked on Monday, he was already looking for what’s next.

He didn’t do anything wrong. The job did.

Here’s the backstory. The company was an early-stage, Series A-backed fintech — the kind of place where the F

ounder/CEO is still in the weeds on everything. He delivered real results for over two years, reporting straight to that Founder, who’s smart but tough to work for. Add a long commute on top of that, and honestly, it’s a small miracle the role lasted as long as it did.

All good things end. This one ended on a Friday, which might be the worst possible day to lose a job — you get the news, and then you sit with it all weekend before anyone can even take your call.

I’m glad we talked Monday morning. He sounded lonely, unsure how to start a week that didn’t have a job attached to it. But he wasn’t sitting still, and that’s the part worth calling out: taking a weekend to process is fine. Letting that weekend turn into a month of doom-scrolling LinkedIn is not. Use the feed to actually message people — not just watch everyone else’s updates roll by while you spiral.

When a founder can’t delegate, hires don’t stick

Too often, a candidate walks into a role that looks exciting on paper and turns out to be un-winnable, because a founder or long-tenured leader can’t actually let go of the work. I think that’s what happened here. Maybe there’s some fault on the candidate’s side too. But the founder himself would probably admit that delegating and trusting his team isn’t his strength.

What to ask before you take a role like this

Before you take a role like this, ask why it’s actually open. Ask what didn’t work for the last person. Then be honest with yourself about whether that’s something you can manage — or something you’ll just inherit. Sometimes it’s a feature of the company, not a bug. You either learn to work around it or you don’t take the job.

The real failure isn’t getting let go. It’s refusing to take anything from it.

I still think about my time at Energizer’s headquarters, back when it was a $3B company. I spent months building presentations that never got shown to anyone — buried under bureaucratic meetings and internal politics before they ever saw daylight. Nobody ever reviewed the work. But I learned more about myself, and about business, in those months than I did in plenty of jobs where everything went smoothly.

So if someone in your life just lost a job and wants to talk, take the ten minutes. You don’t need to have advice ready. You just need to listen. That alone might help them open a door they were about to close.

If you’re a candidate figuring out what’s next, or a hiring manager wondering why your last few hires didn’t stick — that’s the conversation we have every single day. Reach out.

Howard, a hiring manager at Espera Health, interviewed four VP candidates over three weeks. He liked three of them. Then he went quiet.

Not because anything was wrong. He got busy. He took a long-planned vacation. And underneath both, if he’s honest, he genuinely didn’t know which of the three to move forward with.

Two weeks later, he resurfaced, ready to schedule final rounds.

By then we were scrambling. Two of his three finalists had gone quieter themselves — not rejecting anything, just slower to respond, clearly fielding other conversations. We spent those two weeks doing damage control: checking in, keeping them warm, racing to get Howard back in the room before one of them signed somewhere else. That race isn’t over. It’s the one we’re running right now.

Here’s the part that gets missed: nobody rejected anybody. There was no bad interview, no lowball offer, no red flag. Candidates don’t go cold because they found something better. They go cold because they stopped hearing anything at all, and something else showed up in the meantime.

Silence reads as disinterest, even when it isn’t.

A slow “no” still tells a candidate where they stand. A slow nothing tells them nothing — so they fill in the blank themselves, usually with the worst-case version, and start returning other recruiters’ calls.

I get why the stall happens. Liking three candidates is genuinely harder than liking one. You’re not just evaluating people anymore, you’re trying to rank them, and ranking is uncomfortable when there’s no obviously wrong answer. So the calendar fills up, the trip gets taken, and “I’ll figure it out next week” becomes the plan.

Meanwhile, the market doesn’t wait for you to get back from vacation.

If you’re the hiring manager

The stall almost never happens because you don’t know what you want. It happens because you haven’t built in a forcing function to decide. Put the decision on the calendar before the interviews even start — a specific day you’ll rank the finalists, not a vague “sometime after we’re done.” If you’re about to be out for a stretch, tell your recruiter and your candidates that upfront. A known delay is a non-event. An unexplained one is how you lose people.

If you’re the candidate

If you’ve finished a final round and gone quiet on, that quiet is rarely about you. It’s usually a calendar problem on their end, not a verdict on your interview. Ask for a specific date you’ll hear something, not just “soon.” And if that date keeps moving without a real reason, that’s useful information too — about how decisions get made at that company, not just about this hire.

If you’re the recruiter in the middle

This is the part nobody sees. You’re not just managing a search anymore, you’re managing a countdown on candidates who have no idea one started. The job becomes buying time honestly — real updates, real timelines — instead of vague reassurance that quietly turns into a lie the longer the client stays dark.

The best candidates aren’t sitting around waiting to find out if they made the cut. They’re taking other calls. Every week of silence is a week you’re betting they won’t.

If you’ve got a search stuck in the “I’ll get to it” phase — on either side of the desk — hit reply. I’d like to hear where it’s stuck.

I shot terribly at golf last week. By hole three, I’d already stopped keeping score. By hole five, a guy who had to be pushing 75 — shuffling more than walking, no backswing to speak of — beat me hole after hole without ever seeming to try. That’s when I understood something about hiring I’d been trying to put into words for years.

I don’t play golf. Never have. No clubs, no lessons, last time I set foot on a course was a decade ago. But I’ve watched plenty of it — a pro tournament in person 25 years back, a few bored Sunday afternoons on TV — and somewhere along the way I convinced myself I’d hit the ball straight and long a few times, like the pros do. That was the expectation I walked in with. It was wrong.

The Ego Problem

Then the 75-year-old set me straight without ever knowing he was doing it. He didn’t hit far, didn’t hit hard, didn’t do anything that looked impressive. He just put the same short, boring shot in the same spot, over and over, and quietly walked away with the hole every time. My ego did not enjoy this. I wanted to be the guy who could show up cold and still hit it well. Instead I got shown up by a guy who’d clearly done nothing but the fundamentals for fifty years.

Somewhere in there I let the ego go and just started watching the ball, checking my form, no expectations. By hole eight, I got a bogey — one stroke over par. Small win. And immediately, a new expectation showed up: beat that on hole nine. I didn’t. I missed it.

We show up with an expectation, and when we hit it we feel like we’re crushing it. Miss it and the whole day feels wasted — even though an hour earlier, a bogey on a course I’d never played would’ve counted as a win. Half the time the expectation itself is just ego wearing a disguise: we don’t only want to do well, we want to look like we were always going to.

The VP Who Skipped the Process

I watched the same thing play out in a real search a few weeks ago. We had a VP-level candidate — sharp, credentialed, exactly what the hiring manager wanted on paper. But from the first conversation, all he focused on was the outcome: the comp number, the title. He treated the interview process as a formality, did one round with the hiring manager, and stopped there. He never gave anyone internally a reason to fight for him — to push past the initial comp band, to justify the flex in title he wanted. He might have gotten everything he was asking for. People do get exactly that, when they’re excellent enough in the process that the company decides they’re worth bending for. Instead, he lost the opportunity early — focused on the score, never played the round.

Who was I to expect a good round after never really playing the game? I’d watched enough golf to think I understood it. Watching isn’t playing. No amount of wanting the outcome substitutes for putting in the unglamorous rounds nobody sees.

What This Means for Your Search

What are you expecting right now that’s putting pressure on you it doesn’t need to — a number, a title, a “yes”? Quiet it down. Focus on the process. The results show up eventually. And if they don’t, at least you didn’t spend the whole thing pissed off about a number you never controlled in the first place.

Last week, one resume line made me stop scrolling. A C-level marketing exec had listed her Uber Rider rating — 4.9 out of 5. Fair, that’s brag-worthy. I have no idea what mine is. Probably not a 4.9.

It made me realize: candidates will put almost anything on a resume to stand out. I’ll forget most of hers by next week. I won’t forget that 4.9. Her background is solid, though maybe a notch light on seniority for this role. Still, she’s earned a call. I’m hiring for a creative marketer, and her resume made the case before she said a word.

Quick confession: my LinkedIn lists “2nd place, tennis champion vs. the backboard.” I’ve hit hundreds to thousands of balls in a row and still lost. The backboard is undefeated.

Standing out means doing something different, louder, or better than the crowd — genuinely, not gimmicky. Standing out for the wrong reasons? Fix it, don’t spin it. Stop trying. Just be yourself, loudly.

Don’t list a 3.2 GPA. Skip it entirely unless it’s a 3.9 or higher — anything less is an admission, not a flex. Swap it for a stat that says something real about you.

At Ramp Talent, resumes like this are exactly what we’re trained to spot — the line that tells us more about someone than their title does.

We got an urgent request last week: find product candidates, fast, for a hiring manager who needed to move now.

We did our job. Three strong candidates, sourced and screened (hat tip, Nathan). Then the hiring manager told us he was headed on vacation for two weeks. This is a candidate experience problem, not a scheduling problem

Great for him. Now we’re stuck dancing, keeping three good people warm with nothing real to tell them.

Here’s the truth nobody wants to say out loud: the interview isn’t what makes or breaks a hire. The silence after it does.

Why the gap gets so long

Everyone blames the recruiter when a process drags. That’s almost always the wrong target. The recruiter is the one person actually fighting to close the gap. Here’s what’s really happening on the other side:

An executive is busy and keeps pushing the call. Another candidate is mid-process and the hiring manager wants to compare notes before deciding. Something’s on fire internally that has nothing to do with your search. Or it’s July and half the panel is at the lake.

The higher up the org chart, the worse it gets. A CEO who reschedules twice isn’t rejecting your candidate. They’re running a company, and your search is not the only thing on their plate.

Four interviews in two weeks is a win. Say that out loud to anyone who’s run a search. Most processes don’t move that fast, and the ones that do have a recruiter fighting calendars every single day to make it happen.

What the gap does to a candidate

Candidates don’t hear “the exec is busy.” They hear silence, and silence sounds like rejection every time.

Four days between interviews and they’re prepping. Three weeks and they’re refreshing their inbox, replaying the last interview in their head, and quietly taking calls somewhere else. By the time you’re ready to move again, you might be moving on an empty seat.

A slow process isn’t neutral. It’s actively bleeding you candidates while you sit around trying to feel certain.

The fix: never let a candidate go a week without hearing from someone

This is the part most companies get wrong, and it’s fixable in one sentence: every candidate should hear from someone on the hiring team at least once a week. Not a status update. A real touchpoint — 5 to 10 minutes, a call, or thoughtful update email can go a looong way.

If the hiring team can’t make that happen, the recruiter does it instead. That’s the job.

Don’t overthink this. It doesn’t need to be a formal check-in with an agenda. “Hey, still moving, the VP’s back Monday, here’s what’s next” takes five minutes and kills 90% of the anxiety a candidate is sitting with. Silence is what costs you the candidate. A five-minute call almost never does.

If you’re the hiring manager

Block your calendar before you launch a search, not after you fall for a candidate. Every day a great candidate sits with no next step is a day a competitor closes them first. Speed isn’t a favor you’re doing the candidate. It’s how you win.

If you’re the candidate

Most delays have nothing to do with you. Stop building a case against yourself out of silence. Push your recruiter for real updates, show up with as little ego as possible, and drop the expectations entirely. Prepare like every interview is the only one that matters, follow up, and let the timeline be whatever it’s going to be.

The interview is one hour. The space between interviews is where the hire actually gets decided.

No explanation. No real discussion. Just a quick “pass” buried in a hiring panel thread.

Something about it didn’t sit right with me.

We’re in the middle of a brutal C-level search right now. Real feedback is hard to get. The interview panel keeps shifting. Some candidates sail through the first screens and others — equally strong, sometimes stronger — don’t. It’s the kind of search that makes you question yourself. But giving up was never on the table.

We were close to closing this role a few months ago. Then we lost our top candidate to one of the hottest AI companies out there right now. You can guess which one. Back to baseline we went — researching, sourcing, screening, calling in favors. And every time we surface a strong candidate, their LinkedIn profile gets dissected like a doctoral dissertation defense.

That’s how Trent (not his real name) almost slipped through the cracks.

He got the cold-Slack rejection. No real reasoning attached. When I started asking around, I realized nobody on the panel could actually articulate why he wasn’t a fit. They just hadn’t loved him enough to say yes — which isn’t the same as a real no.

So I kept him warm for a couple weeks while I picked my moment. Then I went to the decision-maker and pushed back — not on them, on their reasoning. They heard me out. Trent’s back in the process, and his first interview is on the calendar.

I could’ve let it go. Accepted the non-answer and moved on to the next resume. But I’d done my homework — I knew the role, I knew the criteria, and I knew Trent fit. Whether he ends up being “the one” is still TBD. But I’m glad I pushed for the truth instead of the path of least resistance.

Here’s what I keep coming back to: a lot of hiring decisions aren’t decisions. They’re flinches.

A panel reads ten profiles in a row, gets tired, and the eleventh one gets a “pass” that’s really just decision fatigue wearing a business suit. Nobody’s being malicious. They’re just not being asked to explain themselves — so they don’t.

If you’re a hiring manager: next time you reject a candidate, make yourself say the actual reason out loud. Not “not feeling it” — the specific, defensible reason. If you can’t articulate one, that’s information too.

If you’re a candidate: a rejection — especially a fast, silent one — usually says less about you than you think. Plenty of “no’s” are really just nobody pushing back on a maybe.

If you’re navigating a search where the right person keeps almost getting passed over for reasons nobody can quite explain, that’s exactly the kind of mess we like untangling. Hit reply — I’d love to hear what’s going on.

PS — sending this a day early since half of you are already mentally on a boat for the 4th. Happy Fourth.

Last week a C-level client called to brief us on two open VP roles at his company. He walked through the open roles, the ideal candidate profile, the usual stuff.

Then, almost as an afterthought, he mentioned he’s quietly job hunting too.

The company’s growing. He just doesn’t love the industry anymore, or the day-to-day of his own job.

It’s easy to think of clients as hiring machines — people who just want roles filled, no inner life required. They’re not. They want to be proud of where they work too. They get tired of jobs that don’t fit, same as anyone.

But it puts us in a strange spot.

This guy reports directly to the CEO. He’s about to hire two VPs who’ll report to him — VPs who have no idea their new boss might be gone before they’ve finished onboarding.

Do we say something? To who? When?

Here’s where we landed: we’re not going to tip off candidates or rattle anyone inside the company. Instead, we’re going to ask our client directly — is he sticking around long enough to see these hires settle in, or do we need to start shaping the transition story now? Better to know the real timeline than to guess.

Questions to ask before accepting a VP or leadership role

If you’re a candidate: don’t assume the person who hired you will be your boss on day 90, let alone day one. Ask about leadership stability before you sign. Ask the hiring manager point-blank what their own career plans look like. The answer — or the hesitation — tells you something.

It’s fine if a boss is on their way out. It’s not fine to hide it from the people joining because of them.

To this client’s credit, he’s been straight with us about all of it. If things go well, we’ll help him land his next move too. That’s the job.

We don’t know yet if he’s staying long enough to see these hires through, or if we’ll be having the transition conversation sooner than he thinks. We’ll let you know how this one plays out.

Last Friday, my dog Coco got a tapeworm. By Sunday she’d vomited for two straight days and was declining fast enough that we hospitalized her.

I’m not great with vet tech work — that’s my wife’s department — but I am good at one thing: paying vet bills.

And sitting in that vet’s office, I couldn’t stop thinking about the question nobody likes to ask out loud.

What happens to the family who doesn’t have the money to pay the vet bills?

Does the vet treat the dog anyway and eat the cost? Find her a new family who can pay? Or does the bill decide whether Coco lives? I don’t know the answer, and I hope I never have to find out. But I know this: if you can’t cover a real vet bill, that’s worth sitting with before you bring home the dog. Love isn’t the expensive part. Emergencies are.

Coco’s home now. She’s recovering. We got lucky, and I know it.

Here’s where it got me, though.

Ramp Talent runs executive and technical searches — the kind where a bad placement costs a client six figures and a year of momentum. At that level, I’m not just reading a resume. I’m trying to figure out who someone actually is underneath the version of themselves they’re presenting on the call. And almost everyone I talk to is dealing with something I will never see.

Maybe they spilled coffee on their pants five minutes before the call and are sitting there with a straight face. Maybe their dog is at the vet right now. Maybe their kid was up sick all night. Candidates have to perform “fine” because the job is on the line — so they do.

Here’s how I actually account for that when I’m running a search:

I weight the second conversation more than the first. The first call is performance. Everyone’s rehearsed, caffeinated, and on their best behavior. The second call — especially if I catch them on a rough day, distracted, or running five minutes behind — tells me more about how they’ll actually show up under pressure on the job.

I ask what’s hard right now, not just what they’re proud of. “What’s the hardest part of your current role” gets a more honest answer than “what are your biggest wins.” The wins are rehearsed. The hard part usually isn’t, and it’s where I learn how self-aware someone is.

I give weird moments room instead of penalizing them. If a candidate’s energy is off, I don’t write them off in the first ten minutes. I ask a direct, human question — “how’s your week going?” — and actually listen to the answer before I decide what their flat tone means. Half the time it has nothing to do with the job.

I trust references over polish. Polish is buyable. A former manager telling me how someone handled a bad quarter is not. At the exec level especially, I’d rather hear one honest story from a reference than watch another flawless interview.

None of this is about lowering the bar. It’s about making sure the bar I’m measuring against is the real person, not the version of them built for a 30-minute call.

The best way to assess a candidate beyond their interview performance: ask what’s hard right now, not what they’re proud of.

If you’re a candidate, here’s the coaching version of all this: you don’t owe anyone your tapeworm story, but you do owe yourself a little honesty about your own state. If you’re having a brutal week, don’t pretend you’re not — name it briefly and move on. “Quick heads up, it’s been a chaotic week, so bear with me if I’m a little scattered” takes five seconds and buys you enormous grace. The interviewers worth working with will respect it. The ones who don’t were never going to give you grace anyway. And when you get the “what’s hard right now” question, don’t dodge it with a humble-brag. A real answer, with a little vulnerability in it, is what actually makes you memorable after the tenth interview of the week.

Don’t let your dog get a tapeworm. And the next time someone on a call seems a little off, remember — you have no idea what they’re sitting through to be there. The good interviewers ask. The good candidates can say it out loud.

Q: How do you assess a candidate beyond their interview performance? A: Weight the second conversation more than the first, ask what’s hard right now instead of what they’re proud of, give off energy room instead of penalizing it immediately, and trust references over interview polish.

Q: What’s a better interview question than “tell me about your biggest win”? A: “What’s the hardest part of your current role right now.” Wins are rehearsed. The hard part usually isn’t — and it tells you how self-aware someone really is.

Q: As a candidate, should I tell an interviewer I’m having a bad day? A: Briefly, yes. A five-second heads-up like “it’s been a chaotic week, bear with me” buys you grace from the interviewers worth working with — and costs you nothing with the ones who weren’t going to give you grace anyway.

Last week a hiring manager asked me a question that stopped me mid-call: “How do we screen for candidates who actually use AI?”

He was hiring a VP of Growth Marketing. He wanted someone fluent in AI. But he had no idea how to tell the difference between someone who really uses it and someone who just says “AI” a lot in interviews.

Fair question. Because here’s the weird thing about AI right now:

It’s like a drug people use privately.

Plenty of people use it every day and won’t admit it at work or school. There’s still a vibe that it’s cheating. Cutting corners. Not “real” work.

I get why. But used right, it can 10X your output.

So let me be the first to tell you: I use AI. A lot. You can stop reading now if that offends you.

I use it to write this newsletter. I use it to pressure-test which candidates are the strongest fit for a search. I use it to get better at anything I’m trying to get better at.

Maybe you use it and you’re proud of it. Maybe you use it and you’d never admit it, because you’re worried people will think you’re not “authentic.” Maybe you don’t touch it at all.

I’m not here to tell you what to do.

I’m here to tell you the stigma is costing people — on both sides of the hiring desk.

Here’s what I’ve learned: the more I use AI, the more I realize how much I don’t know. And the thing I value most about it? If I tell it to be brutally honest with me, it will be. No sugarcoating. No trying to please me.

(If I don’t tell it to be honest, it turns into a professional butt-kisser. Ask for the truth. Always.)

That’s the real skill, by the way. Not prompting tricks. Truth-seeking.

Your job with AI — and mine — is to proofread what it spits out, fact-check it, check the sources, and use it to get to the truth faster. It’s not always right. It won’t replace you. But it will make almost anyone faster at their job.

So back to the hiring manager’s question. Here’s where this lands for you:

If you’re a candidate: use AI to prepare for your interviews. Feed it the job description and your resume, and tell it to grill you — honestly — on your weak spots. You’ll walk in knowing exactly which questions you should be sweating.

If you’re a hiring manager: use AI to prep too. Drop a resume in and ask it what you should probe. The gaps, the vague claims, the conveniently missing dates. Then in the interview, don’t ask “Do you use AI?” — everyone says yes. Ask them to walk you through the last real problem they solved with it. The people who actually use it light up and get specific. The people who don’t, stall.

The tool is the same on both sides of the desk. The advantage goes to whoever stops treating it like a secret.

The best interview question for AI skills isn't "Do you use AI?" It's "Walk me through the last real problem you solved with it." One gets you a yes. The other gets you the truth.

PS — The first draft of this post was written by me. I’d show you, but like every first draft, it was shit. The version you just read was improved by AI and fact-checked by my own eyes. That’s the whole point.

This Happens a lot…

When we meet a prospective client for the first time, they almost always ask a question that surprises me:

“Do you actually screen candidates or do you just send resumes?”

To me, that seems like such a basic question.

But then I remember there are plenty of recruiters who do exactly that. They collect resumes, forward them to a hiring manager, and hope something sticks.

The other day, someone in my network saw that we were recruiting a VP of Product and immediately introduced me to who they described as “the best VP of Product ever.”

The problem?

They hadn’t read the job description.

The candidate may have been fantastic for a hardware company, but this role was for a legal AI company. Different industry. Different customers. Different challenges. Different experience.

A great candidate for one company can be completely wrong for another.

This Made Me Realize

Most people think recruiting is matching resumes to job descriptions.

That’s part of the job, but it’s only a small part.

Great recruiting requires understanding dozens of variables that don’t show up on a resume:

• Industry experience

• Technical skills vs. the job

• Company stage

• Leadership style

• Team dynamics

• Compensation expectations

• Career motivations

• Remote vs. office preferences

• Growth trajectory

• Communication style

Then the work really begins.

The candidate has to connect with the hiring manager.

The hiring manager has to connect with the candidate.

The interview team has to align.

The compensation has to work.

The timing has to work.

Any one of those things can break the deal.

I’ve also noticed that the best hiring managers approach interviews with curiosity. They want to understand a person’s story, what motivates them, the challenges they’ve overcome, and how they think.

The hiring managers who struggle often want to spend as little time as possible evaluating people while still expecting a great outcome.

Unfortunately, hiring doesn’t work that way.

This Means For You

Whether you’re hiring your first employee or building an executive team, remember this:

Hiring is a team sport.

Forwarding resumes isn’t recruiting.

Recruiting is understanding both sides of the equation.

You need to deeply understand the company, the role, and the hiring manager.

You also need to deeply understand the candidate, their motivations, strengths, concerns, and goals.

The magic happens when those two sides align.

The best hires rarely happen because someone had the perfect resume.

They happen because someone took the time to understand what success actually looks like and found the person who could deliver it.

This happened.

I was in Phoenix last year when I started noticing Waymos everywhere.

Not one or two. Everywhere.

They looked impersonal. A little eerie, honestly. No driver. No distraction. Just a self-driving car doing one thing — driving.

And then I pulled up next to one at a red light and glanced over at the car beside me. The driver was staring at his phone.

The robot was more focused than the human.

Back home this week, my town started freaking out about a new AI data center being proposed nearby. Everyone had an opinion. Energy usage. Water consumption. The end of the neighborhood as we know it.

Nobody was freaking out about the golf courses using the same water to keep grass green for a sport that, let’s be honest, is a pretty goofy game.

Here’s a thought — what if we built AI data centers in the ocean? Or in outer space? Some people are exploring this. We already put telescopes up there. Satellites. The International Space Station. Why not the servers powering the next era of human intelligence? The engineering challenges are real, but so was landing on the moon. If the pressure of energy and water consumption forces scientists and engineers to think differently about where and how we build these things, that’s not a bad outcome. That’s innovation doing what it always does — finding a way.

Just leave the water alone. And maybe start with the golf courses.

Which made me realize.

We imagine troubles selectively.

We worried the internet would destroy society. Then we gave everyone a smartphone and stopped worrying about the internet.

We worry about artificial intelligence taking our jobs. But I use AI tools every single day — in recruiting, in business development, in content creation — and my job is still here. More than that, I am more productive, more efficient, and delivering better results for my clients and candidates than I ever have before.

I’m old enough to remember when the internet was slowly rolling out inside companies. Some employees had access. Others didn’t. I was a fresh college hire with internet access while Larry, the night shift sanitation supervisor, wasn’t allowed near it.

That seems insane now. But that’s exactly how we treated a technology that changed everything.

AI in the workplace is that moment. Right now. Today.

The professionals asking how do I use AI well are going to look back at this era the way we look back at Larry and the internet. The ones imagining troubles are going to look back wondering why they waited.

Which means for you.

If you’re a job candidate — how are you using AI in your job search and in your work? Not just to polish your resume or generate cover letters, but to think better, prepare deeper, research companies faster, and show up sharper in interviews? AI-powered job searching is already separating top candidates from the rest. The question is which side of that line you’re on.

If you’re a hiring manager — are you asking candidates about AI tools and AI skills in your interviews? You should be. Not to catch them using it, but to understand how they think with it. The future of hiring is not finding candidates who avoid AI. It’s finding candidates who use AI as a force multiplier — while still possessing the critical thinking, resilience, and problem-solving skills to perform when the technology fails them.

The best hiring teams in 2026 are already screening for this. The ones who aren’t are going to fall behind.

AI recruiting tools, AI-powered candidate screening, and AI-assisted hiring processes are not replacing great recruiters and great hiring managers. They are amplifying the ones who know how to use them.

The troubles we imagine about artificial intelligence are almost always bigger than the troubles we actually face.

I have two client meetings and a few solid interviews today. I’m going to imagine good things.

You should too.

— Ben

P.S. Build the AI data centers in the ocean or outer space if you have to. Just leave the water alone. And maybe start with the golf courses.

A lesson in executive recruiting, hiring delays, and missed signals: why top candidates quietly disappear, how hiring teams lose momentum, and what noticing problems earlier can teach us about leadership, business, and decision-making.

One of the most underrated business skills is noticing.

Not intelligence. Not hustle. Not AI.

Noticing.

The ability to notice what other people ignore.

A shift in energy. A delayed response. Increased urgency. Silence. Friction. A change in tone.

Recently, we lost a senior-level candidate to one of the fastest-growing companies in tech.

No, I’m not sharing names. That’s not the point.

The point is: the signals were there.

We just didn’t act on them aggressively enough.

The candidate started taking days to respond to simple questions and emails. Then he’d surface again, answer a few things, and ask more questions about compensation, timing, and when the hiring company planned to make a decision.

He even gave us a deadline.

Meanwhile, the hiring company kept stretching the process.

Another interview. A new stakeholder. A little more waiting.

At the same time, they were developing an internal referral candidate while remaining highly confident in our top candidate.

On paper, everything looked fine.

In reality, momentum was quietly dying.

Then the text came:

He was withdrawing and accepting another offer.

And frankly? I couldn’t argue with it.

It was a damn good offer at a damn good company.

How could we compete?

We probably couldn’t.

But we could have noticed faster.

The signs we missed

• Slower response times from a highly engaged candidate

• Increased focus on compensation and timing

• Repeated questions about urgency and decision-making

• A firm deadline that felt more real than we treated it

• A hiring process that kept expanding despite perceived momentum

• Confidence replacing urgency

One of the biggest executive recruiting mistakes I see is assuming top candidates will simply wait.

They won’t.

The best candidates usually have options.

And momentum matters.

The easy answer would be blaming compensation, timing, market conditions, or the candidate.

The harder answer?

We saw smoke and acted like there wasn’t a fire.

I take responsibility for that.

Could I have been more direct with the hiring team? Yes.

Could I have pushed harder and been even more blunt about the risk of losing the candidate? Absolutely.

I noticed what was happening but didn’t do enough to get others to notice with the same urgency.

That part is on me.

This lesson goes beyond recruiting.

How many problems in business (or life) quietly announce themselves before they become expensive?

Customers stop responding.

Your spouse feels distant.

A top employee becomes disengaged.

Sales calls feel colder.

You stop working out.

You know something feels off.

But instead of addressing it, we tell ourselves a story:

Everything is probably fine.

No news becomes good news.

Until it isn’t.

As humans, we’re quick to credit ourselves for success and blame circumstances for failure.

But growth usually starts with noticing.

Noticing earlier.

Noticing patterns.

Noticing what people aren’t saying.

The smartest person doesn’t always win.

The richest company doesn’t always win.

But the people who care deeply, notice earlier, and act faster?

They create an advantage.

One of the more interesting recruiting challenges is not finding candidates.

It’s helping hiring managers make a decision.

I have a client right now who likes to see a lot of candidates. The challenge is that what he likes in one candidate is often different from what he likes in the next one. So naturally, the response becomes:

“Let’s see more candidates.”

We reviewed the job description together.
We rescoped the role.
We aligned on priorities.
We adjusted compensation and background requirements.

Still… more candidates.

This happens all the time in hiring.

But honestly, this isn’t just a recruiting problem. It’s a modern life problem.

We live in a world with unlimited options.

Too many books to read.
Too many Netflix shows.
Too many productivity systems.
Too many shoes.
Too many LinkedIn opinions.

I can’t even buy shaving cream anymore without going down a 45-minute rabbit hole comparing ingredients, reviews, Reddit threads, and “top 10” lists.

At some point, you have to pick something.

Hiring works the same way.

The Best Hiring Managers Know When to Decide

A great hiring process is not about interviewing 27 people hoping the perfect human magically appears.

It’s about getting clear on:

• What outcomes the role actually owns

• What experience truly matters

• What skills are trainable

• What personality traits fit the culture

• What “good enough to win” looks like

Then interview candidates who align with that criteria.

Not every great candidate has a perfect resume.

Some people interview better than they look on paper. Others have unconventional backgrounds but solve problems better than candidates with cleaner resumes.

If a candidate peaks your interest, talk with them.

Then give a thumbs up or thumbs down.

Move forward.

Too Many Options Creates Fake Progress

Reviewing endless resumes can feel productive.

Sometimes it’s not.

Sometimes it’s just decision avoidance disguised as thoroughness.

Meanwhile:

• The best candidates get hired elsewhere

• Teams stay understaffed

• Work slows down

• Internal stress increases

• Hiring managers burn unnecessary cycles interviewing

The longer the process drags on, the harder the decision often becomes.

My Recommendation for Hiring Teams

In most cases, interview 3–5 strong candidates.

If nobody hits the mark:

• Revisit the scorecard

• Adjust the compensation

• Re-evaluate the requirements

• Clarify expectations internally

• Then continue the search

But eventually, you need to make a decision.

No candidate will check every box.

And no amount of additional resumes will completely eliminate hiring risk.

A Question Beyond Hiring

This idea applies outside recruiting too.

What options are you sitting on today?

Too many business ideas?
Too many books?
Too many strategies?
Too many podcasts?
Too much analysis?

At some point, focus matters more than options.

Pick the path that best aligns with your criteria.

Move.

You can always adapt later.

But sitting still and endlessly reviewing options is rarely the strategy that creates momentum.

— Ben Martinez
Founder, Ramp Talent

AI is becoming a massive advantage in business.

But there’s a downside that hiring teams are quietly starting to notice:

Some candidates are losing the ability to think through problems without it. I heard a term the other day (Hat Tip to Chamath) that describes what I have been noticing, it’s called Resilient Thinking.

One client, let’s call them ACME Soap, noticed that some younger marketing candidates could create polished AI-generated work all day long, but struggled in unscripted situations. Brainstorming. Strategy discussions. Explaining why something would work instead of just generating output.

Another client, we’ll call them Espera Health — encourages engineers to use AI during coding exercises. But many candidates still fail because once the AI output breaks, they can’t troubleshoot the problem themselves.

That’s one of the hidden cons of AI:

It can create the illusion of competence.

You can sound smart.
Move fast.
Generate impressive-looking work.

But if you don’t understand the fundamentals, eventually it shows.

The customer asks a hard question.
The strategy changes.
The code fails.
The CEO pushes back in a meeting.

And someone still has to think.

AI is incredible when it amplifies capability.
It becomes dangerous when it replaces critical thinking, curiosity, and problem-solving.

The best candidates today are not anti-AI.

They’re AI-enabled people with resilient thinking.

Let me say something that most recruiters won’t:

A lot of hiring problems have nothing to do with candidates.

They start with the company not being honest about where they are—Point A.

What companies say vs. what’s actually true

What they say:

“We need a Senior Software Engineer.”

Reality:

• The codebase is messy

• No clear product roadmap

• Leadership changes direction weekly

• The last two engineers quit

That’s not a “Senior Engineer” problem.

That’s a stability and leadership problem.

What they say:

“We need a VP of Sales to scale revenue.”

Reality:

• No consistent pipeline

• Weak product-market fit

• Founder still closing all the deals

• No repeatable sales motion

You don’t need a VP of Sales.

You need someone to build the engine from scratch—or fix the one that’s broken.

What they say:

“We need a Head of Marketing.”

Reality:

• No clear ICP

• Messaging is all over the place

• No attribution

• Expectation is “make us go viral”

That’s not a marketing hire.

That’s a strategy reset.

Why this matters (and costs real money)

When Point A isn’t clear:

• Job descriptions become generic

• Interviews become inconsistent

• Candidates get confused

• The wrong person gets hired

And now you’ve:

• Burned $30K–$100K+ in recruiting fees

• Lost 3–6 months

• Damaged team morale

All because no one slowed down to define reality.

What great hiring managers do differently

The best ones I’ve worked with are brutally clear about Point A.

They say things like:

• “Our team is underperforming and I don’t know why yet.”

• “We’ve outgrown our current leader.”

• “We need someone who can come in and challenge everything.”

That level of honesty changes everything:

• Better candidate targeting

• Cleaner interview process

• Faster decisions

• Stronger hires

A simple framework you can use tomorrow

Before you open a role, answer this:

1. What is broken right now?

2. What has already been tried?

3. What would success look like in 6–12 months?

4. Is this a builder, fixer, or scaler role?

If you can’t answer those clearly…

You’re not ready to hire.

Final thought

Most companies don’t fail at hiring because of a lack of talent.

They fail because they skip Point A.

And in recruiting, skipping Point A is expensive.