Hire Humble People

What are you actually hiring for in a startup? I would argue, ownership mindset, which is a compressed way of saying a "get stuff done" attitude coupled with deep care about the quality of the work and for the customers you serve. This mindset can be incentivised with equity, but only to a point. You want people that care, not because of the potential future upside but because it is in their nature to care deeply about the work they do.

Startups involve long hours, they involve nights and weekends and they involve sacrifice. So how the hell do you find these people, and how do you determine if they care enough with the limited information you have? The answer is to hire humble people.

Humility as a Proxy

While humble people are, in general, better to work with than those that are overconfident; what is most attractive about humility as a trait is that it is an excellent, and more easily testable proxy, for many of the behaviours and attitudes you want in early stage employees. That is to say, it has strong positive correlations with the characteristics you do (and strong negative correlations with the traits you don't) want in early employees.

Additionally, all human beings are attracted to confidence - and too often we mistake confidence for competence. Specifically targeting humility helps us avoid that bias. We also avoid cultural or gender bias due to a perceived lack of confidence. While that isn't the main thrust of our desire to hire humble people, it's a sizeable additional benefit.

Ownership Mindset and Humility

We've spoken about an ownership mindset as a key characteristic of great early startup employees. Let's break down what that entails and demonstrate how humility is an excellent predictor of behaviours consistent with an ownership mindset.

  1. Owners have a GSD attitude - care less about the credit and more about the work - they don't say "that's not my job", they get on with the biggest tasks at hand. They spend less time angling for credit and more time doing the work.
  2. Owners are Constant Learners with a growth mindset -> humility is accepting that you do not know everything and, instead of shying away from that fact with bravado or false pretence, embracing it head-on as an opportunity to learn and grow. Humble people are naturally curious.
  3. Owners are catalysts (they make the whole team better) -> humble people are not the loudest voice in the room. They want to be part of a team because they understand that going far means going together. This is a powerful non-linear effect where everyone in the team is making everyone else better because the team as a collective is low-ego.
  4. Owners pass the layover test - they are people you want to spend time with. Being around them gives you motivation without burning you out. Motivation is the scarcest resource in startups so filling the team with people that you enjoy working with is beyond important. Nobody likes spending time with braggarts and show-offs.
  5. Owners are quietly ambitious -> humble people are often quietly ambitious.

Identifying Humility

If I've managed to convince you that humility is a trait worth having within your business, then the next logical question is how to identify humble people when hiring. Humility is a paradoxical trait in that if someone claims to have it they probably don't.

  1. Invest the time to find evidence of their achievements - Don't just read LinkedIns and CVs, ask deeper questions and be genuinely curious - they will be forced to admit how much they know and how much they have done
  2. Test them on their terms - ask them to explain something to you that they know, ideally something you don't. Humble people will break it down and communicate on your level - they won't try to impress with fancy terminology or make you feel small.
  3. Model the behaviour you want to see - If your entire recruiting process is selling yourself and your company you're giving the signal that is the behaviour you want to see. Instead practice giving credit to others, credit your cofounders and employees, credit your competition when you are genuinely impressed by them.

Testing for Humility

The interview is a great place to test for humility in candidates.

  1. Count the "I"'s - Accepted wisdom is you should avoid using too many we's in interviews so some candidates don't use any, in my view this is a much worse signal. Use we when you mean we, using I only when it's true. Humble people give appropriate credit - they take ownership of their own accomplishments and credit others when it's due.
  2. Humble people take progressively more credit when pushed - This is as much a technique to assess for humility as a counter-signal to find overconfidence. People that have really done the work will be able to tell you every decision made, talk about every tradeoff etc. What often happens when you push a candidate for progressively more detail on previous work is that the most confident will have to back away from earlier claims. The humble will be able to take progressively more credit (explicit or implicitly) because they can continue to talk intelligently about the project right down to individual decisions made.
  3. Humble people understand the role that luck has played in their achievements - You want to be hiring A-players. Everyone you hire early on probably has at least one thing that is extraordinarily impressive - they will have be responsible for divisions, or launched businesses of their own while graduating from top universities. Humble candidates will understand that achieving these impressive things is some part good fortune.
  4. Background reference - Find people that have worked with them before - ask them about the achievements they claimed where solo vs. collective - you should expect that others will agree on the distribution of credit.
  5. Humble people are willing to admit to failure and take responsibility for it - https://x.com/Austen/status/1725280682648461649?s=20

A Word of Caution

As with any mental model, in business or elsewhere, there are dangers to applying it too liberally. In this case it's important to spot false humility and to avoid over-indexing on humility as a hiring signal.

If you have made clear you are interested in humility, by publishing a blog post like this one perhaps, you may find smart candidates exhibiting false humility in interviews. Luckily this is pretty easy to spot in my experience. People will revert back to their natural manner of being, given half a chance.

Treat the presence of humility as a good but not slam dunk signal to hire - it is a heuristic to help find and test for other behaviours - humility without an ownership/growth mindset and strong intrinsic motivation makes for a great pleasant dinner companion but it's not that helpful as a signal for who to hire.