Look for Evidence, Not Performance
Interviews are a strange game when you really think about it.
Two strangers meet, and in less than an hour, one tries to convince the other that they’re the perfect fit—while the other tries to figure out who they really are, based on very little context.
It’s a tiny, weird window to truly get to know someone. And that’s why most interviews miss the mark.
The Illusion of the “Right” Answer
Candidates are trained—whether they realize it or not—to tell you what they think you want to hear. They rehearse canned responses. They say things like “I’m a perfectionist” or “I care too much.”
But the words don’t matter. The only thing that matters is the evidence.
What You’re Really Trying to Do
Your job in an interview isn’t to hear their best guess about how they might behave in the future. Your job is to pull back the curtain and see how they’ve already behaved in the past. Interviews are nothing more than a conversational window into someone’s past.
How to Get to the Good Stuff
Skip the hypotheticals. If you ask “What would you do if…?” you’ll get the answer they think you want to hear. Plus, you’ll get what you really want there by administering a Skills Test, which we talked about in The Critical Role of Skills Testing.
Instead, ask them to recall real experiences they’ve had. Invite them to tell you the whole story:
- Who was involved?
- What was the situation?
- What role did they play?
- What happened next?
- And then what? And then what?
The more detail you get, the more you’ll learn.
An expert tip: Put yourself in the story—not as them, but as an observer. Watch the scene unfold in your mind. Notice what they actually did—not just what they say about themselves.
Would you be proud to watch them behave that way in your company, with your team, in your real-world circumstances?
That’s the question you want answered.
Look for Patterns, Not One-Offs
One great story isn’t enough. Anyone can recall a moment they showed up well. What you need evidence of is a pattern:
- Do they consistently take ownership?
- Do they consistently work through challenges?
- Do they consistently reflect on their growth?
- Do they consistently navigate tough situations with maturity?
Past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior. So look for repeated evidence that matches the behaviors you’ve defined as essential for your business.
Watch How They’re Interacting With You, Too
The interview itself is a live performance. You can learn a lot from how they handle the moment in real time:
- Do they clarify your questions?
- Can they manage a two-part question without getting lost?
- How do they handle being asked to go deeper?
- Do they recover if they get flustered?
- Are they actively listening or just waiting for their turn to speak?
What they do in the interview tells you more than what they say.
Learn to Read the Environment, Not Just the Person
The real secret to identifying talent isn’t just listening for what they’ve done—it’s understanding where they did it, how it shaped them, and whether your environment will unlock their potential or shut it down.
Anyone can recall a story about solving a problem or managing a challenge. But you—you know your business.
You know the pace.
You know the energy.
You know what kind of pressure lives in your walls.
And that makes you the perfect person to translate what they’ve done into what they could do here.
For example, someone who’s spent years navigating customer meltdowns at a busy hotel might light up in a lower-stress, high-touch sales environment—where their instincts for problem-solving and customer care are finally rewarded without burning them out.
Or maybe someone who struggled to keep up in a corporate machine might thrive in a smaller, scrappier team—where their adaptability and curiosity have room to breathe.
Behavior alone isn’t enough. You have to map that behavior to your reality.
So don’t just ask, “What did they do?”
Ask (yourself), “What shaped them?”
And “What might they become in this environment I’ve built?”
Because sometimes the best hire isn’t the person who’s already been perfect somewhere else.
It’s the one who’s been playing the wrong game—waiting for someone like you to hand them the right playbook.
If you want an interview process that actually reveals who someone is—Hiring, Simplified gives you the full framework to hire people who care as much as you do.
About the Author
Lauren Michele Fields led teams in sales and marketing, managed P&L, and opened new markets before she ever wrote a playbook. Then she did that too—sales processes, hiring frameworks, onboarding systems, leadership development, people operations, new product development, and training programs across every function of a growing company. Not as an HR professional. As the operator who needed it to scale.
She built The Modern Small Business Platform because the tools she used in corporate don’t exist at small business scale—and they should. Hiring, Simplified and Align Your Business are the systems she wishes someone had handed her earlier.
She writes about hiring, leadership, and what it actually takes for a business to thrive at laurenmichelefields.com/blog.
Leave a Reply