The worst hiring practice employers follow

The worst hiring practice Kasey Harboe Guentert has witnessed is lacking a clear hiring plan.

Harboe Guentert is an executive consultant at HR consultancy APTMetrics, where she helps employers make “smart, fair, and data-driven decisions when building their teams.” She is also the co-author of The Hiring Handbook, which helps employers better recruit, assess, and select candidates.

“Every new requisition shows up and the hiring manager just does it all by themselves, without any support necessarily,” Harboe Guentert said. “The way they actually conduct the interview and the questions they ask and how they evaluate the capabilities of the candidate, it's just completely random.”

It’s a practice she says is “unfortunately still common,” and one that ultimately hurts hiring managers and their teams. Inarticulate hiring processes can be time consuming, Harboe Guentert said. Even if hiring managers ask good questions, without objective criteria to evaluate candidates, they can end up choosing candidates based on personal feelings (aka, hiring based on vibes).

Hiring managers typically have a good understanding of what success looks like in the job they’re hiring for, even if they haven’t formally communicated that. But encouraging them to focus on that “will get them away from the: “Can you sell me this pen?” or, “do I have a beer with this person?” of question,” Harboe Guentert said.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

What’s the best change you’ve made at a place you’ve worked?

One of the most meaningful changes I led at Airbnb was building out structured, role-specific definitions of what success looks like for jobs like software engineers, machine learning engineers, customer support, or members of our trust team. These definitions, called competencies, helped us create a shared language for evaluating talent, making hiring and promotion decisions fairer, more transparent, and more consistent. It aligned teams around expectations and gave people a clearer path to grow.

What’s the biggest misconception people might have about your job?

That my work is just about writing job descriptions or checking boxes in the hiring process. In reality, it’s about shaping how companies define success, grow talent, and make decisions that affect real people’s careers. I use research, data, and deep collaboration to build systems that help organizations hire and develop fairly and strategically. It’s not just HR—it’s business-critical design.

What’s the most fulfilling aspect of your job?

I’m deeply curious about what people actually do at work. Not just their job titles or high-level responsibilities, but how they think, solve problems, and create value every day. When I’m learning about a role, I go deep below the surface. I ask about the moments that make someone’s work satisfying or frustrating, what decisions they have to make, who they rely on, and what great performance looks like in their context.

I’ve sat with software engineers walking me through code reviews, listened to customer service reps explain how they balance empathy with policy, and talked with trust and safety team members about the ethical choices baked into their daily work. I ask questions until I can picture myself in the role, not to do it, but to understand it well enough to build systems that reflect its complexity and value.

This kind of deep listening and analysis helps me design fairer, clearer talent practices. But more than that, it reflects what drives me: I care about people’s work. I think what people do every day matters. And I believe that understanding those details—really understanding them—is the first step to making work better.

What trend in HR are you most optimistic about? Why?

The growing recognition that how we define, hire, and develop talent really matters, not just to companies, but to people’s lives. There’s a shift happening toward more intentional, evidence-based, and human-centered approaches to work. We’re seeing more organizations invest in clarity, fairness, and transparency—not as afterthoughts, but as core to good business.

I’m especially hopeful about the increasing collaboration between researchers, practitioners, and technologists. When we bring together data, design, and deep understanding of jobs, we can build systems that work better. That gives me hope for a future where people are seen more fully for what they bring, and where career paths are clearer and more inclusive.

What trend in HR are you least optimistic about? Why?

I’m least optimistic about the decline in thoughtful, open discussion around diversity, equity, and inclusion. These conversations have become more politicized and, in some cases, more performative—making it harder to engage with the real, nuanced work that DEI requires. What concerns me most is the risk of losing momentum on efforts that are essential to building fair and effective workplaces. When we stop talking honestly about equity, we stop understanding how to create a better workforce.