Hey everyone, Neil here. You're reading High-Signal Hiring. Hiring systems from 20+ years of global recruitment experience and 500+ technical hires. Zero noise and instantly actionable.
Over the last four issues, we built a complete decision system. One that removes noise, surfaces conviction, and helps founders move fast without making anxiety hires.
This week, we’re stepping back.
Before you design interviews, write job descriptions, or start outreach, there's a more fundamental question most founders skip: Should you actually be hiring right now?
You will learn the four readiness tests that separate real hiring needs from wishful thinking, why timing matters less than systems, and how to know if opening a role will solve problems or create new ones.
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| Why founders hire before they're ready
Hiring feels like progress.
An empty seat feels like a gap. A new person feels like momentum. So founders open roles to solve problems they haven't fully figured out yet.
The logic goes: "We need more capacity. We need someone technical. We need help."
All of this might be true. But none of it means you're ready to hire.
Readiness is not about wanting help. It's about being able to absorb, direct, and leverage that help when it arrives.
| The four readiness tests
There are four questions every founder should answer before posting a role. If you can't answer all four clearly, the role is not ready. And if the role is not ready, hiring will create drag instead of momentum.
1️⃣ Do you have a 90-day mission for this role?
Not a job description. Not a list of tasks. A mission.
If you cannot articulate what this person must deliver in their first 90 days, you do not understand what the role actually is (More on this in HSH #2)
Vague needs create vague hires. Vague hires underperform, leave, or drift into work that doesn't matter.
Strong candidates will ask what they're owning. If you cannot answer that question in one sentence, they will assume you haven't thought it through. They'll be right.
2️⃣ Can you articulate what changes if this hire succeeds?
This is what we call the leverage test.
What breaks if you don't hire? What accelerates if you do? What becomes possible that isn't possible today?
If the answer is "we'll have more bandwidth," that's not leverage. That's relief.
Leverage means you can point to a specific outcome and say, "This person makes that real."
Without leverage, hiring just adds cost and complexity.
3️⃣ Do you have enough runway for a 3-month ramp?
Most founders underestimate how long it takes for a hire to become productive.
Even strong engineers need time to understand the codebase, the product, the team, and the constraints.
If you're hiring someone expecting immediate output, you're setting them up to fail. And you're setting yourself up for disappointment.
Three months is the absolute minimum (some employers would say 6). If your runway is tighter than that, reconsider whether hiring is the right move.
4️⃣ Is there someone who will own this person's success?
This is the question most founders never ask.
Hiring does not end when the offer is signed. It begins there.
New hires need context, feedback, direction, and support. If no one on your team is responsible for providing that, the hire will struggle. Not because they're weak, but because they're alone.
Ownership does not mean micromanagement. It means accountability. Someone needs to care whether this person succeeds or fails.
If that someone does not exist, delay the hire.
| What happens when you skip these tests
I've watched this pattern repeat across multiple early-stage teams.
A founder opens a role because it feels urgent. The hire happens quickly. The new person joins. Then things slow down.
The founder expected momentum. Instead, they get questions, misalignment, and frustration. The hire feels unclear. The founder feels disappointed. Nobody intended this outcome, but the setup guaranteed it.
The issue was not the person. It was readiness..
| Timing matters less than systems
Founders worry about hiring "too early" or "too late."
That framing misses the point.
Early hires can work if the four tests pass. Late hires can fail if they don't.
Timing is not the variable. Readiness is.
If you have a clear mission, real leverage, enough runway, and someone who owns success, hiring will probably work. If any of those are missing, it probably won't.
| How to use this today
Take your next open role and answer the four questions in writing:
What is the 90-day mission?
What changes if this hire succeeds?
Do we have six months of runway after they start?
Who owns their success?
If you cannot answer all four clearly, the role is not ready. This is good. You now have clarity
Delaying a hire costs time. A bad hire costs momentum, morale, and trust. One of those is recoverable. The other is not.
| Why this matters
This test does not exist to slow you down. It exists to make sure hiring accelerates the business instead of complicating it.
Great hires happen when founders are ready to absorb them. Systems enable that readiness. Urgency does not.
If the four tests pass, move fast. If they don't, fix the gaps first.
Hiring is leverage. But only if you're ready for it.
Cheers
Neil