The case for evidence-based hiring

I’ve always loved the craft of recruitment. It’s work that lights me up and makes me happy to get out of bed every day.

I kicked off my career after university in executive search and agency recruitment in London, and later moved in-house into HR.

Something I noticed everywhere I went was how candidates were evaluated and hiring decisions were made based on best-guesses, assumptions, and gut feeling, no matter how smart, methodical, and professional the hiring managers were.

There didn’t seem to be an alternative.

That never felt right to me.

Organisations spend huge amounts of money on payroll. In many organisations, it’s the single largest operational cost. If you’re making a six-figure investment in almost any other area of the business, your procurement team would research the options, gathering data, evaluating risks, and collecting evidence before making a decision.

Yet somehow, when it comes to hiring people, this same logical and evidence-based approach rarely carries through.

I found this increasingly surprising as I progressed through my career. Hiring isn’t just about technical capability. It’s also about bringing someone’s personality, working style, motivations, energy, and unique human qualities into a team. Those factors have just as much impact on team success as whether someone can perform the job technically.

Given the importance of these decisions, I always felt we should be able to do better than relying mostly on assumptions and intuition.

Over the years, I completed a wide range of recruitment and psychometric training, and observed practices across many organisations.

Even in the most sophisticated environments, assessment topped out at structured interviews.

While structured interviews are definitely better than unstructured ones, I noticed that when it came time to choose between candidates, there often wasn’t a strong method for making the final decision. Even with the information available, people frequently reverted to instinct and gut feeling.

To an extent, the desire to do that is understandable. Hiring is a human decision, and naturally, we want to apply our personal judgement and intuition to it.

But I’ve seen too many situations where that intuition led to bias, where someone interviewed brilliantly but couldn’t actually do the job, where a candidate was selected simply because they were the best option, or where someone looked great on paper only to find them a culture clash once they joined.

I think we can do better.

I know we can do better.

And that’s why I developed my Lightning Profile methodology.

The problem with traditional hiring evidence

Just because we’re working with humans doesn’t mean we should rely solely on instinctive decision-making.

I believe we should gather sound evidence and use it systematically so decisions are based on reality rather than roulette.

When reviewing applications, a CV only tells part of the story.

This is even truer now that AI can generate applications on behalf of candidates. They may not have written the document themselves, making it harder to assess their communication skills, written expression, and even the authenticity of the information.

I think CVs are valuable as a signpost. They help us decide who to investigate further. But I don’t believe they should be treated as hard evidence for hiring decisions.

There is also the challenge that job titles mean different things in different organisations, and tenure does not equal skill.

We often assume that someone with fifteen or twenty years of experience must be operating at an advanced level. Sometimes that’s true. But I’ve also seen professionals relatively early in their careers show exceptional capability, while others with decades of experience haven’t developed beyond a much narrower skill-set.

Time served is not the same thing as capability.

Interviews present similar challenges.

Even when designed carefully, interviews are still based on people interpreting role requirements, building questions they believe will test suitability, and evaluating responses through their own experiences and perspectives.

Structured interviews improve consistency and are supported by strong research. However, they are still only one source of evidence, and they are rarely enough on their own to create a complete picture of a candidate.

A different approach

I’ve built Lightning Profiles to show real evidence of how well a candidate matches a role.

I assess technical capability, behavioural competencies, culture alignment, and human factors using a range of proven assessment methods and psychometrics, tailored to the needs of each role.

We can use this collection of strong evidence, together with other information, to analyse and evaluate in a detailed and meaningful way.

The result is a richer and more holistic view of the candidate as a whole-person professional.

More importantly, the information is collected consistently across all candidates. Instead of comparing different interview experiences, different questions and different impressions, we’re comparing data collected in the same way through the same process.

This significantly reduces the potential for bias and creates a much stronger foundation for decision-making.

The candidate comparison analysis between Lightning Profiles clearly shows where candidates align strongly to role requirements, where there may be development areas, and how they compare against one another.

Instead of relying primarily on instinct, hiring managers can combine their judgement with objective evidence and rich analysis.

Why evidence-based hiring matters

Evidence-based hiring works, and I strongly believe it is the future of recruitment.

It helps organisations cut through the fog of AI-generated applications and large candidate volumes.

It helps us understand genuine capability and avoid making assumptions based on job titles, tenure, or interview performance.

It helps us evaluate culture and behavioural alignment in a more structured and objective way.

And as human skills become increasingly important in an AI-enabled world, it gives us a practical way to assess qualities that are often difficult to evaluate consistently through interviews alone.

The results

Lightning Profiles have genuinely changed the game for me.

When I present them to clients, I can see the moment the light flicks on above their heads and the uncertainty disappears. The conversation changes from opinions and assumptions, and it becomes about evidence and informed evaluation.

To date, end to end hires through the Lightning Profile methodology have achieved a 94% success rate; measured by strong mutual alignment and the candidate remaining in role for at least 12 months. 

For me that mutual candidate/client satisfaction is the ultimate measure of success.

Looking ahead

I believe evidence-based recruitment should be the gold standard.

Every organisation deserves access to high-quality information when making important hiring decisions.

The decisions we make about people have a profound impact on team performance, organisational culture, business outcomes, and the careers of the individuals involved. They are just too important to be left to assumptions and best guesses.

Human judgement will always matter. We should absolutely draw on our experience, intuition, and expertise when making hiring decisions.

But the best hiring decisions happen when experience, intuition, and expertise are supported by real evidence. That’s the principle behind every Lightning Profile, and it’s why I’m so passionate about evidence-based hiring.