Why You Should Hire People Who Failed Before

Lucas and Luna dig into a counterintuitive hiring strategy: why candidates with a prior failure—a startup that folded, a product launch that flopped, a project that missed every milestone—often outperform those with spotless résumés. They unpack a 2024 study from Harvard Business School that tracked 2,100 early-career engineers and found that those who had experienced a significant professional failure in the previous three years had a 34% higher probability of being rated a top performer in their next role. The hosts walk through the mechanics: failure forces pattern recognition, humility, and a willingness to experiment. They also address the obvious risk—how to distinguish between someone who learned from failure and someone who just makes the same mistakes—and offer concrete interview questions that probe for genuine reflection rather than scripted redemption arcs. The episode closes with a comparison to venture capital: VCs routinely bet on failed founders because they know the data. Shouldn't hiring managers do the same? #Hiring #Failure #Resilience #HiringStrategy #TalentAcquisition #HarvardBusinessSchool #EngineeringHiring #Performance #GrowthMindset #Interviewing #Recruitment #Business #FexingoBusiness #BusinessPodcast #HiringAndFiring #CareerAdvice #HR #WorkforceDecisions Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo