Field notes on hiring people for frontline work.
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7 hiring mistakes that lead to the wrong sales hires
Over half of early sales attrition is driven by fixable hiring process issues. Most poor sales hires are not down to bad candidates. They are the predictable result of how the hiring process is designed, especially for entry level roles where speed and volume matter. Here are the seven mistakes we see most often and […]
What makes an assessment defensible at enterprise scale?
Assessments do real work. They help carry the heavy lifting of hiring decisions by supporting who progresses and who doesn’t. As hiring programmes grow in volume and complexity, those decisions must hold up across roles, regions, and scrutiny from multiple stakeholders. That’s why assessments sit at the intersection of: At that point, defensibility is about […]
The Employment Rights Act 2025: What resourcing needs to fix now
The Employment Rights Act, to be phased in from 2026, represents a structural reset of UK employment law by shifting risk, accountability and decision making much earlier in the employee lifecycle. For resourcing leaders, this goes beyond procedural tweaks. It forces a rethink of how work is resourced in the first place. How demand is […]
The hidden “tests” candidates face — and why entry-level hiring needs proper processes
A guide to fair, consistent, and predictive selection methods for entry-level hiring. Every week another Reddit post goes viral, exposing the strange, improvised “tests” candidates face. And this week, one Reddit post summed up the whole problem in a single screenshot. A hiring manager proudly described their “punctuality test”: They join a Zoom call 15 […]
The 4 biggest mistakes recruiters make when using personality tests for hiring
Personality tests can be useful tools in the right context. They offer structure, they give teams a shared language, and they can help people understand how they prefer to work. But when recruiters start using personality tests for hiring — especially as part of high-volume or frontline recruitment — things often go wrong. Misinterpretation, overconfidence […]
Are Personality Tests Valid for Pre-Employment?
Personality testing has been part of the HR toolkit for decades. It feels structured, it feels objective, and it gives the impression of insight into how people think and behave.But the moment you use a personality test for pre-employment screening, the expectations change. The assessment must be predictive, job-relevant, and defensible — not just interesting. […]
Are your hiring assessments legally defensible?
A bad hire hurts. But using assessments that can’t be legally justified? That can cost far more — in tribunal payouts, reputation, and compliance penalties. From the UK to North America, employment law is converging around one principle: selection tools must be fair, evidence-based, and clearly job-related. Regulators, candidates, and courts are now asking what […]
How to Create an AI-Proof Pre-Screening Assessment
Over half of candidates now use AI at some point in their job search.That’s not a threat — it’s a signal that hiring needs to evolve. As Chris Platts, CEO of ThriveMap, puts it: “It’s not about beating AI. Companies use AI too. The real question is: how do we design hiring processes that still […]
Rethinking Validation: How to Know If Your Hiring Assessment Is Actually Working
Let’s get one thing clear upfront: yes, you can measure whether a hiring assessment is working. But the way most organisations try to do it is completely backwards. There’s a dangerous obsession in modern hiring: the belief that every decision must be justified by a tidy line on a graph. Nowhere is this more common […]