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

Most companies hire one candidate and ghost the rest. But a growing body of research shows that second-place finalists — people who came within a single interview of an offer — represent one of the highest-quality talent pools available. In this episode, Lucas and Luna examine a 2025 study from the Society for Human Resource Management that tracked 1,200 finalists across 40 companies. The study fo...

In this episode of Hiring & Firing with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna explore why 'culture fit' is a flawed hiring lens and how a single question can reframe the search toward 'culture add.' They walk through the 2025 study from Harvard Business School and the University of Chicago that analyzed 50,000 interview transcripts. The question — 'What’s a project you started that didn’t exist before you got t...

In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore the single interview question that can predict how responsive a candidate will be to feedback and growth. Drawing on a 2025 study from the Journal of Applied Psychology that tracked 1,200 hires over 18 months, they discuss why 'Tell me about a time you changed your mind about something important at work' is more revealing than traditional behavioral question...

In this episode of Hiring & Firing, Lucas and Luna dive into the growing problem of candidate ghosting — where companies simply stop responding to applicants after interviews. They discuss the psychological impact on candidates, the hidden costs to employer brand, and the surprising data showing that ghosted candidates are 40% less likely to buy from your company. Using examples from a large tech...

Standard rejection letters kill candidate goodwill and hurt your hiring pipeline. But a small number of companies are flipping the script: they send rejected candidates a specific next action—a referral prompt, a prep guide for another role, or even a short feedback note. Lucas and Luna dig into data from Greenhouse and Lever showing that candidates who receive a meaningful next step are 3x more l...

Episode 77 of Hiring & Firing with Fexingo. Lucas and Luna explore a single metric that top-performing sales organizations use to predict a candidate's future performance before they're hired. They dive into a study of 5,000 sales reps across 30 companies, revealing that the number of times a candidate mentions their own past failures in an interview correlates with a 23% higher quota attainment i...

In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore how top companies are turning the 'no' into a strategic asset. They focus on a specific case: a mid-size tech firm that, instead of ghosting rejected candidates, sent personalized feedback and invited them to join a talent community. Within six months, 14% of those candidates were hired for other roles, and the company saved $1.2 million in recruiting fees....

Episode 75 of Hiring & Firing with Fexingo examines a radical retention experiment: a mid-sized tech firm eliminated all notice periods for resignations—no two-week notice, no awkward transition. Lucas and Luna break down the surprising results: voluntary turnover dropped 50% in the first year, but only after management fixed the underlying trust issues. They discuss the psychology of the 'golden...

Lucas and Luna explore why traditional resumes are poor predictors of job performance and how pre-hire assessments — like work samples and cognitive tests — are changing the hiring landscape. They dig into a case study from Google's Project Oxygen, where structured assessments reduced mis-hires by 24 percent, and discuss the surprising finding that a 10-minute work sample test predicts performance...

In this episode of Hiring & Firing with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna explore why candidates who initially rejected your recruiter InMail can become your strongest hires. Lucas shares a case study from a mid-size SaaS company that tracked responses to their initial outreach over two years. They found that candidates who politely declined but left a positive impression had a 40% lower voluntary turnover...

Lucas and Luna unpack a counterintuitive hiring insight: the best predictor of a candidate's potential might be what happens in the first two minutes of the conversation. Drawing on a 2024 study of 10,000 interview transcripts from a major tech firm, they explore how early verbal cues — like asking clarifying questions or referencing past failures without prompting — correlate strongly with long-t...

Episode 71 of Hiring & Firing with Fexingo dives into the surprising results of a year-long trial at a mid-sized tech consultancy that switched to a four-day workweek without cutting pay. Lucas and Luna unpack the data: revenue grew 38%, employee turnover dropped by half, and sick days fell 25%. But they also examine the hidden costs — client pushback, scheduling complexity, and the risk of employ...

Episode 70 of Hiring & Firing with Fexingo explores why overconfidence is a hidden hiring hazard. Lucas and Luna dissect a 2025 study from Harvard Business School that tracked 2,000 new hires and found that candidates who answered 'What's your biggest weakness?' with generic self-improvement answers had a 34% higher turnover rate than those who gave specific, honest responses. The hosts break down...

In this episode of Hiring & Firing with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna explore the counterintuitive strategy of a no-notice resignation policy. When a mid-sized tech company in Austin eliminated the standard two-week notice requirement, they expected chaos. Instead, voluntary turnover dropped by 51% within 18 months. We unpack the psychology behind this: how removing the guilt and friction of quitting ac...

Episode 68 of Hiring & Firing with Fexingo explores why traditional experience-based hiring fails and how one company cut mis-hires by 40% by screening for curiosity instead. Lucas and Luna drill into a specific case: a mid-size tech firm that replaced 'years of experience' requirements with a three-question curiosity assessment. They discuss the research behind curiosity as a predictor of adaptab...

This episode explores a counterintuitive hiring strategy: tapping the pool of candidates you previously rejected. Lucas and Luna examine research from a 2025 study by the National Bureau of Economic Research that tracked 1,200 hires across 50 companies. The study found that candidates who were initially rejected but later re-recruited for a different role performed 15 percent better on average and...

Most turnover models predict departure too late. In this episode, Lucas and Luna examine a finding from a 2025 Gallup meta-analysis: the employee's 90-day mark is the single strongest predictor of voluntary turnover in the first year, stronger than salary, commute, or manager relationship. They break down the data—why the spike happens, what the exit surveys actually show, and how one mid-sized lo...

Episode 65 of Hiring & Firing with Fexingo explores the untapped potential of boomerang employees—people who leave your company and later return. Lucas and Luna dive into a 2024 study by the Workforce Institute at UKG that found rehires are 40% more likely to stay longer than first-time hires, and often reach full productivity 2-3 weeks faster. They examine why companies like Starbucks and REI for...

In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore a startling hiring experiment: a mid-sized logistics company eliminated the standard two-week notice period for new hires, allowing them to start immediately without notice. The result? A 47 percent drop in first-year turnover. They unpack why the policy works—it signals trust, reduces anxiety, and filters out candidates who are already half-out-the-door. Th...

Episode 63 of Hiring & Firing with Fexingo explores how written application materials — cover letters, short-answer responses, and even email replies — can predict on-the-job performance more accurately than traditional interviews. Lucas and Luna examine a 2025 study from researchers at the University of Minnesota that analyzed 1,200 hires across four mid-sized tech firms. The study found that can...

In this episode, Lucas and Luna examine how algorithmic hiring tools inherit and amplify human bias using the example of Amazon's abandoned resume-screening AI. They walk through the specific feedback loop: historical hiring data taught the algorithm to penalize resumes containing the word 'women's,' degrade candidates from all-women's colleges, and favor verbs more common on men's resumes. The ho...

For decades, recruiters have relied on gut feel, reference checks, and structured interviews to gauge how long a new hire will stick around. But a 2025 meta-analysis of 47 studies across industries found that a single question asked during the first screening call predicted 12-month retention with 71% accuracy — beating every other common hiring metric. In this episode of Hiring & Firing with Fexi...

In this episode, Lucas and Luna examine a startling hiring study: how a simple change in the first five seconds of an interview, allowing candidates to speak uninterrupted, reduced bad hires by 60 percent at a midsize tech firm. They break down the psychology behind interviewer interruption bias, where managers form snap judgments that derail accurate assessments. Through a real case study from a...

Lucas and Luna dig into a counterintuitive hiring strategy: why candidates with a prior failure—a startup that folded, a product launch that flopped, a project that missed every milestone—often outperform those with spotless résumés. They unpack a 2024 study from Harvard Business School that tracked 2,100 early-career engineers and found that those who had experienced a significant professional fa...

Lucas and Luna dive into the surprising finding that a single metric — the time between application and first live conversation — predicts whether a new hire stays past 12 months better than any interview question. Drawing on a 2025 study of 12,000 hires across five industries, they explore why speed signals respect, how slow hiring kills engagement before day one, and why one logistics company cu...