Talent Makers

Expert Insights: Pattie Money

Pattie Money was former Chief People Officer at Twilio, former CPO at Sendgrid, and currently a member of the Board of Advisors of the University of Colorado Denver Business School. She has over 25 years of HR leadership experience.

When you think about the best leaders you've worked with, how do they judge the business value of hiring great talent?

For most of the people who do this incredibly well, they're super intentional because the cost of getting it wrong is so high. What does the mistaken hire cost your team? What does it cost your company? What does it cost you as a leader in your credibility? That's a lot of downside.

Do any examples come to mind?

I had an SVP of engineering who needed to hire a VP. Things were urgent, the scale of the business had gotten too big too quickly, they needed help desperately, and they made a hire that, although qualified, they were unsure of in terms of how they would lead the team.

The person was a bad hire, and after three months they were gone. But just in that short period the person had done considerable damage—especially to the credibility of the SVP with the team, not to mention also losing a couple of great people because of it.

As a result, the next time around the SVP was much more intentional in their hiring process: a ton of situational interviewing, bringing the person through a number of scenarios, and also dinner and lunch. I think the poor candidate went through 11 interviews before we finally ...