06/04/2026
The candidate who has never failed will fail you.
The resume looked perfect.
Impressive background.
Every role a step up.
Every project listed as a win.
So you hired them because on paper they checked every box.
Six months later something feels off and you can't quite put your finger on what changed.
Resumes show what people have done.
They tell you almost nothing about how someone behaves when things actually get hard.
And in a small business, things get hard regularly.
Ambiguity is constant.
Systems break.
Priorities shift overnight.
How your ops person responds in those moments is what actually determines whether your business scales or stalls.
Skill without humility is a ceiling.
An ops person who has never had to sit with a real failure, own their role in it, and come out the other side with something learned will eventually stop growing.
When they stop growing, your business does too.
One question that tells us more than any resume ever could:
"Walk me through a project that went sideways. What was your role in it?"
Pay attention to what comes back.
Candidates who shift blame, get vague, or can't find themselves anywhere in a story about something going wrong are showing you who they are under pressure.
The ones who own it and can tell you exactly what they'd do differently? Those are your people.
We help small business owners vet the mindset before the offer goes out. DM us to have a convo.
