The Bar Gets Higher With Every Hire
Feb 6, 2025
You cannot maintain your standards while hiring.
You are either raising the bar, or you are lowering it. If you try to keep it the same, you will end up lowering it. And you will pay dearly.
Its just human nature.
Want to raise the bar?
At Amazon, we had an iron-clad rule: Every hiring decision required a “Bar Raiser” — someone outside the team who could veto even the most senior hire. Why? Because we discovered something crucial about building world-class teams:
You can’t maintain high standards. You can only go up or down.
Today I’m sharing battle-tested systems for technical hiring excellence that I developed over decades at Apple, Amazon, and beyond. These aren’t just theories — they're proven approaches that will help you build stronger teams starting with your very next interview.
The Bar Must Rise
Here’s the hard truth I learned leading major initiatives: When we unconsciously hire people below our level (a common human tendency), we create a downward spiral.
Each “good enough” hire slowly erodes both culture and results, accelerating over time.
A recent Harvard Business Review study confirmed what we discovered at Amazon: In high-performing organizations, key individuals consistently deliver results up to 10x greater than their peers. These aren’t just strong individual contributors — they’re “force multipliers” and elevate entire teams.
That's why we had the Bar Raiser system. Having an objective outsider focused solely on maintaining rising standards — with full veto power — systematically counteracts our natural bias toward faster, easier hires.
Interview Excellence
Here’s the blueprint I’ve refined over many interviews and hires:
Prepare with Purpose
Review the resume and create a written interview plan before you start
Develop a consistent set of questions you ask every candidate — this lets you calibrate what great looks like across interviews
Have a bank of thoughtful questions you use for each role and level, and adapt them to the experience of the candidate
Go Beyond Surface Knowledge
Skip technical or other trivia — anyone can memorize and you won’t learn much. If you have some favorites, turn them around into questions that will show you your candidate’s opinions, judgments and rationale.
Instead, probe for insights, opinions, judgments and rationale about tools, systems, processes, people and real-world trade-offs
Listen for opinions grounded in direct experience they can thoughtfully explain (even if you disagree)
Test Real-World Problem Solving
Present actual challenges you’ve faced
Watch their process: Do they ask thoughtful clarifying questions?
Notice how they handle ambiguity and state assumptions
Look for systematic thinking even when they don’t know the full answer
Culture Contribution over Culture Fit
One of the most dangerous phrases in hiring is “culture fit” — because it often becomes code for “do I like them?”
Instead, I train teams to assess “culture contribution":
What new perspective would they bring to our team?
How would their unique experiences enhance our decision-making?
What gaps in our collective thinking could they fill?
What capabilities do they have beyond what we have today?
This shift transforms hiring from a comfort-seeking exercise into a deliberate search for people who will make your team stronger because they’re capabilities are beyond or in a different direction from what you have already.
A great hire will go beyond great mission alignment, beyond great communication and relational skills, and open up new possibilities for your team going forward.
Making the Call
Move quickly post interview while things are fresh in your mind:
Document Everything
Take digital notes against your prepared questions
Within two hours post-interview, add your assessment of each answer
Write a clear overall assessment: Strongly Inclined, Inclined, Not Inclined, or Strongly Not Inclined
There is no middle ground — being unclear helps no one
Apply the Bar Raiser Mindset
Would this person raise our standards?
Could we learn from them?
Would they thrive under pressure and ambiguity?
Can we trust them to deliver alongside us?
Communicate Clearly
Send detailed notes to the hiring manager promptly
Be available for follow-up questions and live debrief
Focus on specific examples that support your assessment
Time for Action
Your hiring decisions today shape your team’s reach tomorrow. Get started now:
Create your standardized question set
Document your assessment system
Practice articulating “culture contribution” vs. “culture fit”
Set up mechanisms to gather interview feedback from candidates
Review your last three hires — did they truly raise the bar?
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What’s your biggest hiring challenge? Which of these principles would make the biggest difference in your organization?
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— Gregor