Elevate with Robert Glazer Elevate Classics: Geoff Smart on How To Never Make A Hiring Mistake Again
Apr 28, 2026
Dr. Geoff Smart, founder of ghSMART and hiring expert with a PhD in organizational psychology, shares practical approaches to getting hiring right. He breaks down the A Method for Hiring, explains why gut-feel interviews fail, and shows how scorecards, probing questions, and intentional culture-building expose the best candidates. Stories and concrete techniques keep the conversation lively and actionable.
54:30
Gut Feel Hiring Explains 50 Percent Regret Rate
- Gut-feel hiring remains rampant and explains a roughly 50% worldwide hiring success rate.
- Systematic use of criteria, scorecards, and data can dramatically improve predictive accuracy over intuition and affinity bias.
Four Step System Beats Gut Feel Hiring
- Hiring success requires a four-step system not magic interview questions.
- Geoff Smart defines the A Method as Scorecard, Source, Select, and Sell to raise hiring success toward 90%.
Write A Quantified Scorecard For Every Role
- Create a written scorecard that lists measurable outcomes required for the role instead of vague experience checklists.
- Include numeric targets and the cultural competencies unique to your firm to make hiring objective and aligned.
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Intro
00:00 • 2min
Geoff's background and why he studied leadership
02:03 • 4min
Founding ghSMART and its mission
05:36 • 6min
The A Method for Hiring overview
11:53 • 2min
Common hiring mistakes and gut-feel hiring
13:39 • 7min
Scorecards: define success with metrics
20:49 • 6min
Interviewing pitfalls: avoid hypotheticals
26:34 • 2min
Probing for truth: follow-ups and silence
28:38 • 3min
The infamous 'slap' story: why depth matters
32:06 • 6min
Rapport, curiosity and respectful interviewing
38:17 • 5min
Building culture intentionally at ghSMART
43:11 • 7min
Hiring mistake lessons and a lone-ranger hire
50:17 • 3min
Outro
53:38 • 42sec
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Power score
Geoff Smart
Power Score provides leaders with a framework to increase their strategic impact by prioritizing high-leverage activities and aligning teams around measurable outcomes.
The book outlines methods for assessing opportunities, structuring teams, and driving performance through clear scorecards and accountability.
Drawing from ghSMART's consulting experience, it combines practical tools with leadership psychology to help managers execute strategy effectively.
Real-world examples show how focusing on the right things can accelerate growth and organizational success.
The book is positioned as a practical complement to hiring-focused resources from the author.
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Man's Search for Meaning
Viktor Frankl
The book is divided into two parts.
The first part recounts Frankl's harrowing experiences as a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz, between 1942 and 1945.
He describes the inhumane conditions and the psychological and emotional struggles of the prisoners.
The second part introduces Frankl's theory of logotherapy, which posits that the primary human drive is the search for meaning, rather than pleasure.
Frankl argues that meaning can be found through three main avenues: work (doing something significant), love (caring for another), and suffering (finding meaning in one's own suffering).
The book emphasizes the importance of finding purpose and meaning in life, even in the most adverse conditions, as a key factor in survival and personal growth.
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Who
The A Method for Hiring
Geoff Smart
Randy Street
In 'Who: The A Method for Hiring', Geoff Smart and Randy Street offer a comprehensive and structured approach to hiring top talent.
The book outlines a step-by-step method to ensure that the right candidates are selected, emphasizing the importance of defining the job, finding A players, and conducting effective interviews.
It also provides strategies for avoiding common hiring mistakes and ensuring long-term success.
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The culture code
Daniel Coyle
In 'The Culture Code', Daniel Coyle delves into the secrets of highly successful groups by examining some of the world’s most effective organizations, such as the U.S.
Navy’s SEAL Team Six, Pixar, and the San Antonio Spurs.
Coyle identifies three universal skills that generate cohesion and cooperation: building safety through belonging cues, sharing vulnerability to foster trust, and establishing purpose through clear narratives.
The book combines leading-edge science, real-world examples, and practical strategies to help leaders and teams create an environment where innovation thrives, problems are solved, and expectations are exceeded.
#
The CEO Next Door
The 4 Behaviors that Transform Ordinary People into World-Class Leaders
Tahl Raz
Kim R. Powell
Elena L. Botelho
Based on analysis of over 2,600 leaders from a database of 17,000 CEOs and 13,000 hours of interviews, The CEO Next Door debunks myths about CEO traits and outlines practical steps to develop essential behaviors for career advancement to the top.
It provides a roadmap including career staging, interviewing tips, first 6 months as CEO, and managing boards, with real-world examples of CEO archetypes like the 'sky is the limit' innovator and 'safe pair of hands' reliable leader.
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Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't
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In 'Good to Great,' Jim Collins and his research team investigate why some companies achieve long-term greatness while others do not.
The book identifies key concepts such as Level 5 Leadership, the Hedgehog Concept, a Culture of Discipline, and the Flywheel Effect.
These principles are derived from a comprehensive study comparing companies that made the leap to greatness with those that did not.
The research highlights that greatness is not primarily a function of circumstance but rather a result of conscious choice and discipline.
The book provides practical insights and case studies to help businesses and leaders understand and apply these principles to achieve sustained greatness.
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The Effective Executive
The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done
Peter Drucker
In this book, Peter F. Drucker identifies five essential practices for business effectiveness: managing time, choosing what to contribute to the organization, knowing where and how to mobilize strength for best effect, setting the right priorities, and making effective decisions.
Drucker emphasizes that these habits can and must be learned to achieve true effectiveness in an executive role.
The book draws from his extensive experience in organizational management and consulting, offering insights that remain relevant despite the passage of time since its original publication in 1967.
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Atomic Habits
James Clear
Atomic Habits by James Clear provides a practical and scientifically-backed guide to forming good habits and breaking bad ones.
The book introduces the Four Laws of Behavior Change: make it obvious, make it attractive, make it easy, and make it satisfying.
It also emphasizes the importance of small, incremental changes (atomic habits) that compound over time to produce significant results.
Clear discusses techniques such as habit stacking, optimizing the environment to support desired habits, and focusing on continuous improvement rather than goal fixation.
The book is filled with actionable strategies, real-life examples, and stories from various fields, making it a valuable resource for anyone seeking to improve their habits and achieve personal growth.
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Leadocracy
Geoff Smart
Leadocracy examines why many organizations suffer from weak leadership and prescribes practical remedies to ensure the right people lead the right jobs.
The book argues that unclear roles, misaligned incentives, and poor hiring decisions create leadership failure and offers systematic approaches to fix them.
It provides tools for defining expectations, measuring performance, and holding leaders accountable.
Case studies illustrate common leadership pitfalls and show how disciplined people practices can transform organizational outcomes.
Leadocracy complements the author's other work by focusing on leadership structure and governance.
Dr. Geoff Smart is the world’s leading expert hiring. He is the is the Founder and Chairman of ghSMART, a leading global management consulting firm for talent, and the co-author of three bestselling books. One of those, Who: The A Method for Hiring, is a New York Times bestseller and is considered the leading resource on helping businesses hire and develop top talent. Geoff has a PhD in organizational psychology and has personally advised three US Governors, White House Fellows and a President of the World Bank.
In this classic episode, Geoff joined host Robert Glazer on the Elevate Podcast to talk how to hire and retain talent, why so many people do interviews wrong, how companies can recruit better, and more.
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