Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions

Lucas and Luna examine the first 90 days of a chief executive officer's tenure, using the high-profile case of a CEO who was ousted within a quarter. They break down what goes wrong when a leader doesn't listen to existing culture, how board oversight often misses early warning signs, and what companies can learn about onboarding at the top. Specific red flags include ignoring frontline feedback,...

In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore why some of the most effective hires come from outside the usual talent pool. They look at a specific case: a mid-sized tech company that deliberately recruited a philosophy PhD for a product manager role — and how that hire reshaped their product roadmap. They discuss the research on cognitive diversity, the practical challenges of assessing non-traditional...

In this episode of Hiring & Firing with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna explore why hiring from outside your industry can yield unexpected talent. Lucas shares how a regional bank in Ohio hired a former restaurant manager as a loan officer—and how she outperformed every finance hire in her cohort. They discuss the hidden value of diverse problem-solving frameworks, how to vet transferable skills, and why...

Lucas and Luna explore why hiring for 'culture add' rather than 'culture fit' leads to stronger, more innovative teams. They break down the distinction using the example of a mid-sized tech firm that deliberately hired people who challenged its norms — and saw a measurable boost in idea generation and retention. The hosts discuss how to interview for culture add, common mistakes managers make, and...

Episode 103 of Hiring & Firing with Fexingo explores whether a four-day work week can actually improve your hiring outcomes. Lucas and Luna dive into a 2025-2026 study of 500 companies that adopted a four-day schedule and tracked candidate quality, offer acceptance rates, and employee retention. They discuss the surprising data on how the policy filters for high-value candidates who prioritize eff...

Most interviews focus on what candidates did, not who they worked for. This episode argues that asking about someone's worst manager is one of the most revealing questions you can ask — it surfaces resilience, self-awareness, and how they handle conflict without putting them on the defensive. Lucas and Luna walk through real examples: the candidate who described a micromanager, the one who dodged...

Lucas and Luna explore the counterintuitive strategy of hiring people who outshine you. Using the example of how Steve Jobs recruited John Sculley with the line 'Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life?' they unpack why hiring above your own capability reduces turnover, sparks innovation, and builds a culture of excellence. They cite a study from Cornell showing that teams with a...

In this milestone 100th episode, Lucas and Luna dive into the most underrated hiring metric: learning agility. Drawing on the story of a mid-sized tech firm that cut its bad hire rate by 30% simply by measuring how quickly new hires mastered unfamiliar tasks, the hosts explain why years of experience and polished resumes often mislead. Lucas breaks down the specific assessment — a 30-minute struct...

In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore a specific case study of a mid-sized tech firm that slashed its bad hire rate by 40% by overhauling its interview process and implementing a structured scoring system. They break down the two key changes the company made: replacing unstructured conversational interviews with a standardized rubric and adding a post-hire feedback loop between hiring managers a...

Episode 98 of Hiring & Firing with Fexingo explores the counterintuitive idea that strategic firings can strengthen company culture. Lucas and Luna examine the case of a tech startup that let go of 8% of its workforce in a single day—not for performance issues, but for cultural misalignment. They discuss how the CEO used a clear values framework, the immediate impact on morale and productivity, an...

In this episode of Hiring & Firing with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna explore a common but costly mistake: hiring too quickly to fill a vacancy. They break down the real-world consequences using the example of a mid-sized tech company that rushed to fill a senior engineering role and ended up losing six months of productivity, team morale, and customer trust. Lucas shares data from a 2025 LinkedIn study...

Most interviews are a performance: the candidate puts on a show, the interviewer tries to see through it. Lucas and Luna argue that one simple question—'What did you change your mind about recently?'—cuts through the script faster than any behavioral prompt. They break down why this question reveals intellectual humility, actual learning patterns, and whether someone can revise their thinking in r...

In this episode of Hiring & Firing, Lucas and Luna explore why focusing on a candidate's potential rather than their past experience can lead to better long-term hires. They discuss a 2024 study from the National Bureau of Economic Research that found employees hired for potential—measured by cognitive ability, curiosity, and learning agility—outperform those hired for direct industry experience b...

In this episode of Hiring & Firing with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna explore a counterintuitive hiring hack: the person giving the reference might be the real signal, not the candidate. They dig into research showing that a manager's language—vague praise, hedging, over-enthusiasm—predicts future performance better than anything on a resume. Lucas brings data from a 2024 study of 2,000 reference calls,...

Lucas and Luna dive into the story of a startup that hired a brilliant executive who nearly destroyed their culture, and how they turned that failure into a framework for hiring for values alignment. They break down the specific signals that predict whether a candidate will undermine team dynamics, and why traditional interviews miss them. Using the example of a fintech company that lost three top...

In this episode of Hiring & Firing with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna explore why asking candidates for their salary history is a flawed practice that perpetuates pay inequity and limits your talent pool. They dive into the research showing that salary history questions anchor offers to past biases rather than market value, and discuss how companies that have banned the practice — including a case study...

Episode 91 of Hiring & Firing with Fexingo. Lucas and Luna explore why hiring for cognitive diversity — not just demographic diversity — can transform team problem-solving. They break down a 2025 study from the Harvard Business Review showing that teams with high cognitive diversity solved complex problems 42 percent faster than homogeneous teams. Lucas shares how one financial services firm redes...

Episode 90 of Hiring & Firing with Fexingo. Lucas and Luna break down a 2025 study from the Society for Human Resource Management which found that a single bad hire costs companies an average of $45,000 in hard costs—and that's just the tip of the iceberg. They explore the hidden drain on team morale, lost productivity, and management time, and why most companies massively underestimate the true c...

Many companies treat probation as a passive waiting period, but a mid-sized logistics firm in Chicago redesigned theirs as an active three-month diagnostic. Lucas and Luna break down how they used structured check-ins, skill-based milestones, and a single 'go/no-go' decision metric to identify mismatches before they cost the company. The result: first-year attrition dropped by 34 percent and manag...

Most hiring managers call references as an afterthought — and it's costing them good hires. In Episode 88 of Hiring & Firing, Lucas and Luna unpack a 2025 study from the Journal of Applied Psychology showing that unstructured reference calls have zero predictive validity for job performance. They walk through why 'Would you rehire this person?' is the only question that matters, how one company re...

In this episode of Hiring & Firing with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna dive into the research behind structured interviews. They explore a Harvard Business Review study showing that structured interviews predict job performance twice as well as unstructured chats. The hosts discuss how a simple scoring rubric can eliminate bias and improve hiring outcomes, using real examples from companies like Google a...

In this episode of Hiring & Firing with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna explore why candidates who have experienced a public failure often make stronger hires than those with pristine resumes. They examine a 2025 study from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business showing that entrepreneurs who failed before age 35 and started a second venture performed 18% better on average than first-time foun...

Most interviews test how well someone sells themselves, not how well they do the job. This episode digs into the growing body of evidence that work-sample tests — a 30-minute task that mirrors actual job duties — predict on-the-job performance more than twice as accurately as traditional interviews. We look at a specific case: a mid-size B2B software company that introduced a coding exercise for i...

Episode 84 of Hiring & Firing with Fexingo explores the radical referral-only hiring model at a mid-sized tech firm in Austin. Lucas breaks down how the company achieved a 60% lower turnover rate and 40% faster time-to-fill by requiring every candidate to come with an internal referral. Luna challenges the model on diversity risks, and Lucas shares surprising data about their demographic outcomes....

Lucas opens with a story about a software company that hired a candidate with a perfect resume but who quit after three weeks because they couldn't handle a single critical code review. This leads to a discussion about the single best predictor of long-term employee success: resilience. Lucas shares data from a Google study on high-performing teams that found psychological safety was the top facto...