A guy I respect asked me how to hire his first operations person. He had a job description, a salary band, a benefits estimate, and a Loom video walking through the role. He was ready to post it on three job boards by Friday.
I asked him one question. Have you ever worked with this person before in any capacity?
He said no. He had met them twice at events and liked their energy. So his plan was to take someone he had spent a combined three hours with and hand them a forty hour a week seat at the center of his business.
That is not hiring. That is gambling with a resume.
The way the good ones actually come in
Every strong hire I have made in the last decade started small. Not zero to sixty. More like zero to two hours a week. Five hundred dollars a month. A loose, miniature version of a job. A test pilot of a relationship.
The math on that is roughly fifty dollars an hour, which feels high until you compare it to the cost of firing someone in month four. You give them something real but contained. A weekly task. A small project. A specific outcome you can actually evaluate. And then you watch.
You watch how they communicate when something goes sideways. You watch whether they ask good questions or just nod. You watch whether they finish things or let them drift. You watch how they respond when you give them feedback that is not glowing.
None of that shows up in an interview. All of it shows up in two hours a week.
What you are actually testing
The mistake leaders make is treating hiring like a yes or no decision when it is really a slow dimmer switch. Most of the people you are excited about on day one are not actually the person you want six months in. And most of the people who become indispensable were not the most polished candidate in the room. They were the one who took the small thing seriously.
So stop asking, should I hire this person. Start asking, what is the smallest version of this role I can give them right now.
A few practical shapes that work.
The project tryout. One discrete deliverable. Two to four weeks. Defined scope, defined payment, defined success criteria. You both walk away with information.
The weekend lane. A few hours a week on one slice of the role. Inbox triage. Listing coordination. Showing feedback follow up. You see them inside the work without betting the business on it.
The paid shadow. They sit in on calls, observe systems, and write back what they noticed. You learn how they think. They learn whether they actually want the job they thought they wanted.
In every version, you are buying information cheaply before you buy a person expensively. You are also being honest with them. A lot of people accept full time roles they would have turned down if they had seen the actual work first.
The leaders who scale cleanly are not the ones with the best job descriptions. They are the ones who built a runway long enough for both sides to opt in with their eyes open.
If someone is going to be great, two hours a week will reveal it. If someone is going to be a problem, two hours a week will reveal that too. Either answer is worth fifty dollars an hour.
Hire the relationship. Not the resume.
What is the smallest version of your next hire you could offer this month? Hit reply and tell me.