Insight certainty 4/5 debate potential 2/5

Rhodes: Keep conducting executive reference checks until you find negative feedback

Max Rhodes · 20VC: Faire's Max Rhodes on Three Steps To Hire the Best Candidates, Why Every Company Should Have a Strategy Doc and How To Do It & The Art of Referencing; How to Get the Most Out of Every Reference · Feb 18, 2022 · at 26:55

Max Rhodes is the co-founder and CEO of Faire. He outlines his candidate reference checking process for key executive hires.

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“And then using references to round that out, and to make sure that, and doing a lot of references, like, for really senior roles, five, six, seven references, one of the pieces of advice I've gotten is keep digging until you find something bad, and then are the bad things that you find deal breakers for the things that you really need in the role.”

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