Executive summary: The author argues that recruitment is one of the highest-leverage functions in high-impact organizations, yet it is widely neglected and undervalued; they call for more people to become deeply focused—“obsessed”—with improving hiring through empirical, experimental approaches, as this could unlock substantial organizational impact.
Key points:
Despite huge candidate pools, hiring processes in the high-impact sector leave both candidates and organizations dissatisfied—suggesting deep inefficiencies in how recruitment is done.
Recruitment shapes nearly every dimension of organizational success (strategy, culture, structure), making it second only to cause selection in determining impact.
Organizations struggle to find strong recruiters because the role demands an unusual blend of project management, decision-making under uncertainty, and contextual understanding of the ecosystem—skills rarely found together.
The current evidence base for hiring effectiveness is weak: even the best assessment methods only moderately predict job performance, and the field lacks good data or robust experimental validation.
Many skilled recruiters move into higher-status roles, creating a retention problem and depriving organizations of experienced hiring talent.
The author urges greater social and intellectual investment in recruitment—treating it as an experimental science of impact rather than an administrative function—and invites others similarly passionate about hiring innovation to collaborate.
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Executive summary: The author argues that recruitment is one of the highest-leverage functions in high-impact organizations, yet it is widely neglected and undervalued; they call for more people to become deeply focused—“obsessed”—with improving hiring through empirical, experimental approaches, as this could unlock substantial organizational impact.
Key points:
Despite huge candidate pools, hiring processes in the high-impact sector leave both candidates and organizations dissatisfied—suggesting deep inefficiencies in how recruitment is done.
Recruitment shapes nearly every dimension of organizational success (strategy, culture, structure), making it second only to cause selection in determining impact.
Organizations struggle to find strong recruiters because the role demands an unusual blend of project management, decision-making under uncertainty, and contextual understanding of the ecosystem—skills rarely found together.
The current evidence base for hiring effectiveness is weak: even the best assessment methods only moderately predict job performance, and the field lacks good data or robust experimental validation.
Many skilled recruiters move into higher-status roles, creating a retention problem and depriving organizations of experienced hiring talent.
The author urges greater social and intellectual investment in recruitment—treating it as an experimental science of impact rather than an administrative function—and invites others similarly passionate about hiring innovation to collaborate.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.