Most organisations still place enormous emphasis on interviews when making hiring decisions.
The problem is that interviews are often one of the least reliable ways to predict how somebody will actually perform once they join a business.
That doesn’t mean interviews have no value. Clearly, they do. But many organisations rely on them far too heavily when assessing long-term potential, cultural fit and future performance.
That’s one of the central ideas behind the CPD-accredited Hire Great People methodology developed by Simon Hartley, Founder of Be World Class, in partnership with Headstar.
Interviews often assess confidence more than character
One of the biggest challenges with traditional interviews is that they tend to favour people who interview well rather than necessarily people who perform well. Some candidates are naturally articulate, polished and confident in interview environments.
Others may be quieter, more reflective or less comfortable selling themselves despite potentially having many of the characteristics that drive long-term success within a business.
That can be particularly relevant when assessing more introverted personalities or certain neurodivergent individuals, where traditional interview settings may not always allow people to demonstrate their strengths fully – regardless of whether those interview skills are actually important to the role itself.
The difficulty is that interviews often tell organisations relatively little about how somebody responds under pressure, how coachable or adaptable they are, whether they take accountability consistently or how well they are likely to align with the wider culture and environment around them.
Yet those are frequently the characteristics that determine whether somebody genuinely succeeds once they join the organisation.
By contrast, as Simon Hartley’s work with elite sport and high-performance organisations has consistently shown, the strongest teams rarely recruit on technical capability or first impressions alone. They recruit much more intentionally around character and behaviours.
CVs rarely tell the full story either
The same issue often applies to CVs. Qualifications, experience and career history clearly matter, but they don’t always explain how somebody actually operates within a team or organisation.
In many ways, CVs are becoming even harder to assess objectively as candidates increasingly use external support, professional writing services and AI tools to help present themselves more effectively on paper.
That’s one of the reasons organisations are starting to think much more carefully about how heavily they rely on credentials and polished presentation alone when making recruitment decisions.
At Headstar, we’ve seen plenty of examples where candidates with outstanding CVs and highly relevant experience ultimately weren’t the right long-term fit for the environment or culture around them.
Equally, we’ve seen people with less conventional backgrounds become some of the strongest performers in the business because they demonstrated the right attitude, resilience and willingness to learn.
One example internally was Rachel Porteous, now a Manager at Headstar. Rachel joined from a customer service background with limited recruitment experience and no finance market knowledge. On paper, there were candidates with more directly relevant experience.
But what stood out were the characteristics she demonstrated – communication skills, emotional intelligence, resilience and coachability. She went on to become one of the strongest performers in the business, quickly progressing to Manager and winning the Yorkshire Young Recruitment Professional of the Year award.
Experiences like that reinforced something important for us: often, the best long-term hires are not necessarily the people with the strongest CV.
Building more intentional recruitment processes
One of the recurring themes Headstar and Simon Hartley kept seeing through leadership workshops, recruiting on character events and practical implementation inside organisations was that high-performing businesses tend to be much clearer on what behaviours, standards and characteristics genuinely drive success internally. That clarity changes how organisations recruit.
Rather than relying too heavily on instinct, polished interviews or credentials alone, they become much more intentional about assessing both capability and character together.
That doesn’t mean interviews disappear altogether. It simply means they become one part of a broader and more structured recruitment process.
Over time, those recurring themes and practical experiences eventually led to the development of Hire Great People – a CPD-accredited online programme designed to help organisations build a more intentional and consistent approach to recruitment.
The programme focuses on helping organisations improve how they attract, assess and develop people over the long term, with a particular emphasis on recruiting on character as well as capability.
What’s included in the Hire Great People programme:
• Three live group coaching sessions with Simon Hartley
• 45+ bite-size video lessons with a comprehensive interactive workbook
• 14.25 hours of recognised CPD learning
• Signed copy of Simon Hartley’s best-selling book, Hire Great People
More importantly, the programme is designed to help organisations:
• Improve hiring success rates by recruiting more intentionally around character
• Reduce the cost, disruption and frustration of poor hiring decisions
• Build stronger cultures and higher-performing teams
• Create a more consistent and repeatable recruitment process
50% introductory discount currently available using code: HireGreatPeople50
Learn more here: www.headstar.co.uk/great
