Key Takeaways

  • Out-care the competition: Adam Ward argues that genuine care for candidates is a free, unfair advantage in a competitive talent market. Your team can always care more, and this becomes a powerful differentiator.
  • Work samples are king: Forget endless behavioral interviews. Research shows work samples are the highest predictor of on-the-job success, yet most companies underutilize them. Shift your assessment focus to real work.
  • Closing is a continuous journey: You aren't closing a candidate just at the offer stage. The actual close begins at first contact, understanding motivations, and shaping the entire interview process to address those specific needs.
  • Build community before day one: Prevent offer renegs with a "second motion" post-acceptance. Organize dinners with other new hires or build micro-communities to make new team members feel connected and excited before they even start.

The Method: Making Care Your Unfair Advantage

Most founders treat recruiting like a series of hurdles to clear. Submit a resume, pass a phone screen, do a few interviews, get an offer. Lenny Rachitsky and Adam Ward flip this script, pushing for a recruiting strategy that’s less about filtering out and more about drawing in, using genuine care as a competitive edge.

Ward puts it plainly: “I think there's like all kind of tactics out there that are of varying degrees of cost. But out caring other companies that like when I've built recruiting teams, that's something that we've always talked about. Like, we can care more about that candidate than anyone else. That That's in us. That's within us. We can do that.” This isn't about being 'nice'; it's a strategic commitment to creating an experience so positive, even rejected candidates become promoters. Because, as Ward notes, if they're elite talent, their promotion carries extra weight.

This deliberate care shows up in a few key ways:

First, optimize for real signal. Ward calls out the common flaw: “Research has shown that work samples are the highest predictor of success at a company. But yet most companies are still spending a lot of time doing one-to-one across the table assessments.” Stop wasting time on generic questions. Give candidates a slice of real work, and see how they perform. This also serves as a two-way street, giving them real data to decide if your company is the right fit.

Second, understand that closing isn't a last-minute sprint. It's a marathon that starts at hello. Your team needs to understand a candidate's core motivations and what drives their potential move early on. Every interaction should then subtly speak to those motivations. “The goal is to not be selling at the close. We're we're we're trying to sell throughout,” Ward explains. Your interview process becomes a sustained conversation, not a series of interrogations.

Finally, the unseen battleground: the time between offer acceptance and their first day. This is where renegs often happen. Ward calls for a "second motion" here, a dedicated effort to keep new hires engaged and connected. This might involve small dinners with other new team members, connecting them with future colleagues, or sending resources that help them ramp up faster. "We try to create essentially create community around them," says Ward. This isn't about hand-holding, it's about building belonging and momentum so they arrive excited and ready.

Where This Breaks Down

This meticulous approach isn't for every company or every role. For extremely high-volume hiring of entry-level positions, the deep, personalized care and extensive work samples might be too resource-intensive. Crafting bespoke work samples and facilitating multiple community-building dinners for dozens of hires a month could overwhelm a small recruiting team. Additionally, if your company culture isn't genuinely oriented towards candidate experience, these tactics can feel inauthentic and backfire, appearing as a thin veneer rather than true care. A candidate will quickly spot a performative effort.

What to Do With This

This week, identify one key role you're hiring for. Before you post the job, brainstorm a small, realistic work sample that would genuinely predict success in that role, then build it into your interview process. Next, for any candidate who accepts an offer, schedule an informal "pre-boarding" dinner or virtual coffee with two other non-hiring team members in their future department. It's a small touch that builds community and significantly reduces the chance of a last-minute reneg.