Hire for Risk, Not Resume
In a startup, prioritise intelligence and quickness over experience — and never hire someone you'd later lay off
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 88%
Schmidt's hiring doctrine starts from what a startup actually is: no history, no incumbency, competitors by definition, and no time. That means prioritising intelligence and quickness over experience and stability, and taking risks on people. Young people dominate startups less because of energy than because they lack executive baggage and are willing to take risks. The mirror-image rule governs the downside: Google's position was that you should not lay people off, you should not hire them in the first place — much easier, and it rejects the then-standard practice of culling the bottom 5% every six or nine months.
Origin
Schmidt ran this at Google for a decade, where the only layoff was roughly 200 people in sales after the 2000 crash — an event he remembers as extremely painful precisely because it was the first.
Core principles
- 01A startup has no history, no incumbency and no time, so speed of mind beats stability.
- 02Young hires take risks because they lack the baggage long-tenured executives carry.
- 03The cheapest way to avoid layoffs is to be slow and deliberate about hiring.
- 04Even the lowest performers hold knowledge and value the corporation can use.
How to run it
- 1
Screen for intelligence and quickness
In a startup, weight raw intelligence and speed of thought above years of experience and track-record stability.
Pro tip Schmidt's own answer on what made Larry and Sergey special: frankly, raw IQ.
- 2
Take deliberate risks on people
Accept that hiring in a startup is a bet, and take the bet on people who will discard old ideas quickly.
Pro tip Startups wiggle — they try something, try something else, and are very quick to discard an old idea.
Watch out Corporations spend years defending a factually false belief and only change after losing every contract.
- 3
Don't hire rather than lay off
Hold the hiring bar high enough that you never need a routine layoff cycle.
Pro tip Google's stance: why lay people off, just don't hire them in the first place — it's much, much easier.
Watch out Routine bottom-5% culls assume you have correctly identified the bottom 5%, which you probably have not.
- 4
Build a technical culture
Weight the organisation toward technical people and let them figure out what needs doing.
Pro tip Schmidt's hindsight: he would have hired even more technical people and even fewer non-technical ones.
Watch out If you have to sell hard, ask why you are selling an inferior product — build the right product and customers come.
- 5
Point engineers at customers, not at you
When a team presents, tell them you are not the customer — go get real customer feedback and act on it.
Pro tip Marissa Mayer's fix at Google was A/B testing, because neither she nor her team could judge UI by opinion.
Watch out In the invention process people fall in love with an idea and stop testing it.
In the wild
In Schmidt's decade as CEO, Google's only layoff was around 200 people in the sales structure after the 2000 crash, and he remembers it as extremely painful.
→ The no-automatic-layoff position let Google take a more positive view of employees, which employees reciprocated.
Mayer told Schmidt she could not judge user interfaces and neither could her team, but they knew how to measure — so she organised A/B tests using the network's instrumentation.
→ Judgment about product was replaced with measurement of dwell time, commenting, forwarding and sharing.
Common mistakes
Routine bottom-5% culls
The practice assumes the ranking is accurate and ignores that even weak performers hold knowledge and value the company can redeploy.
Is it for you?
Best for
Startup founders and early-stage leaders building a hiring philosophy from scratch.
Not ideal for
Regulated or safety-critical roles where deep domain experience is non-negotiable.
From the transcript
“in a startup you want to you want to um prioritize intelligence and quickness over experience and sort of stability you want to take risks…”
“we had a position of why lay people off just don't hire them in the first place it's much much easier”
“even the lowest performers have knowledge and value to the corporation”
From the episode
Ex Google CEO: AI Is Creating Deadly Viruses! If We See This, We Must Turn Off AI! They Leaked Our Secrets At Google!
Eric Schmidt