Gbolade Ogunfowote
A tech founder and product manager with 10 years’ experience building scalable digital products. He leads teams from idea to launch and runs Mactavis Digital; a product development agency and SellAnything; a multi-channel e-commerce platform for businesses.
Article by Gigson Expert
In my career, I’ve been fortunate to be the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of 4 different companies and startups. One of my biggest challenges across all companies was hiring technical staff. As the CTO, you have to be directly involved in the hiring process as the candidates who make it to your team can make or mar your efforts.
When hiring in Nigeria, there is no shortage of applicants. In fact, you may receive countless CVs within days of posting a role. However, finding candidates who can actually perform, is another matter.
This is especially true for roles like design, engineering, and product where output matters more than intent.
For CTOs and founders, the goal is not to review more CVs. The goal is to quickly identify who can deliver results. To hire the right team, you have to have effective vetting mechanisms in place.
Here is a practical guide to vetting candidates sourced from job sites in Nigeria.
Hire Based on Evidence of Work
Most CVs are optimized for impressions. Candidates list: tools they’ve used, roles they’ve held, responsibilities they’ve had.
However, what you should be interested in is: what they actually built, what they improved, what results they drove. Always do a deep-dive into select work in their portfolio. Instead of reviewing places worked and responsibilities listed, review their achievements in their past roles and let the interview be centered around that.
A candidate without verifiable proof of work is a huge risk. Always prioritize evidence over description.
Test for Execution, not Knowledge
Many candidates can explain concepts. Far fewer can apply them, especially under pressure. Candidates come to interviews with memorization, theoretical understanding and rehearsed answers, you must learn not to reward that. To counter this, ask scenario-based questions, ask questions about their experience on past projects.
During the interview, you can even give candidates short tests that mirror the work they’ll be doing on a day-to-day basis. For example, a short test I like to give Frontend developers is sending them a random web page, and asking how they’ll optimize it.
Another good practice is to give evaluated candidates a further technical test, sites like intervue.io are a good platform to test candidates’ technical skills.
Remember, knowledge tells you what someone knows. However, execution tells you what they can do. Always test for execution.
Evaluate Communication Clarity
Soft skills are just as important as technical skills in the workplace, and one of the most important soft skills to have is communication. Regardless of the mode of work; remote or in-person, clear communication is integral to delivery.
For technical roles, there will be many candidates who understand the work but can’t explain it clearly. This may hamper their ability to work effectively in a team.
Take note of how candidates explain past projects, how they structure their thoughts and how they respond to questions with complex answers. You can ask: “Explain this concept like I’m 5 years old”.
Clarity is productivity. A candidate who cannot communicate clearly will slow down your team, regardless of skill level.
Identify Real Ownership vs Team Contribution
A common pattern with Nigerian candidates is inflated responsibility in their CVs. Under their past roles, you will see line items like: “Worked on a team that built…”. This doesn’t pinpoint their actual contribution to the projects they worked on.
At the interview stage, you need to separate contributors from key players and owners. It is common for even intern-level candidates to take responsibility for the success of projects they played a very tiny role in.
To get further clarity about their individual contribution, ask “What part of that project was entirely your responsibility?”
You can then further ask:
- What decisions did you make?
- What challenges did you face?
- What would you do differently?
Real contributors can go deep and give unique insight to each of the questions above, if a candidate relies on theory or gives vague answers, that’s a tell-tale sign of low contribution. Hire people who have taken actual responsibility and had ownership over major aspects of past projects they’ve worked on, not those who hide behind teams.
Test for Initiative
One of the biggest hiring failures is selecting candidates who wait for direction. In fast-moving companies, especially startups, you need people who can figure things out on their own and make the right decisions without constant supervision.
Specifically, when hiring for senior roles, you have to test for initiative. Pay attention to how much the candidate “cares” about what they do. There is a point above just meeting KPIs, to hire the best candidates, ask: “If you join and receive no tasks for your first week, what would you do?”.
Strong candidates would have already done their research before the interview and will actually already have questions about your products/offerings. Their response to the above question will center around: proposing improvements, understanding the product, identifying gaps/bugs. Look out for responses specific to your product/company, not generic answers.
Validate Depth of Knowledge and Experience
A common pattern with CVs from Nigeria is the “I too know” syndrome. These are candidates who list countless scopes of knowledge. For example, developers listing 10 different languages and frameworks as their areas of expertise.
This happens because some candidates jump between roles quickly without any depth or worthwhile experience in any. To hire a candidate, there should be consistency in career progression e.g. a developer who spent 2 years as a React developer, then 1 or 2 years as a Next JS developer, then finally a React Native developer. This example shows a logical career projection, that is, foundational knowledge then broadening knowledge across frameworks complimentary to the foundational knowledge. This shows proper depth and breadth of complimentary knowledge and experience.
If you have to choose, go for depth over breadth. A candidate who has mastered one thing is more valuable than one who has touched many (note: this doesn’t apply to managerial roles, managers should be generalists).
The Generic Job Seeker
Unfortunately, on job sites there are a lot of grifters who just apply for roles en masse, sometimes using AI tools. They have no peculiar interest in the role or in your business. They just apply for any open roles they see regardless of whether they qualify or not. They use AI tools to tailor their CV to match the job description and do a rushed preparation for the interview, some may even use AI tools to respond to interview questions and can clearly be seen reading off the screen during the interview. I call these candidates “Generic Job Seekers”.
It is easy to spot these kinds of candidates. Their CVs appear generic and vague, they are unable to properly explain their listed skills. They rely heavily on buzzwords (some even unable to properly pronounce the buzzwords). They generally aren’t curious about your organization and have no specific insights or questions to ask. They are also usually more interested in the remuneration than understanding the role.
Serious candidates are selective, they evaluate you as much as you evaluate them. They ask questions when you give them the opportunity to. They are eager to discuss specifics about how they can contribute to your business.
Smart Employment Contracts
Interviews and tests are useful, but nothing replaces real work. This is why it’s important to include probationary periods in employment contracts. A probationary period is like a paid trial period where you reserve the right to terminate the employee if they can’t perform in the role up to your communicated KPIs.
There are also other factors to observe during a probationary period: work ethic, communication style, proactiveness, quality of work etc.
A probationary period helps you limit the consequences of bad hiring.
Asides probationary periods, it’s important that your employment contract also contains provisions for conduct and behavior, with disciplinary measures clearly stated, this usually cautions bad candidates and makes them avoid taking up the job.
Build a System
Hiring failures are caused not only by bad candidates but also weak hiring systems. If your hiring process relies on simple CV reviews, gut feelings, and casual one-step interviews, you will more often than not hire bad candidates.
Build a hiring system that favors practical experience and tests for knowledge and execution instead.
The cost of a bad hire is not just salary, it is time, momentum, and missed opportunity.
