Latest / Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions / Why You Should Hire People Who Criticized Your Company
Transcript
- Lucas: A few years ago, the VP of Engineering at a mid-size SaaS company called PagerDuty — you might know them from incident management — decided to try something weird. Luna: Weird how? Lucas: He started actively recruiting people who had left negative Glassdoor reviews about the company. Not just reading the reviews for feedback — he'd reach out to the reviewers and ask them to interview. Luna: That sounds like a fast track to hiring a bunch of chronic complainers. Lucas: That's the obvious fear. And it doesn't always work. But the data from that experiment — and from a few other companies that have tried similar approaches — tells a more interesting story. The hires that came from that pipeline had a 30 percent higher retention rate after two years compared to the average hire, and their performance ratings were slightly above the median. Luna: Thirty percent higher retention? That's striking. But I'm guessing it's not just 'anyone who complained.' There has to be a filter. Lucas: Exactly. The VP didn't just scrape Glassdoor and invite everyone with two stars. He looked for specific patterns in the reviews. The key signal was whether the criticism was specific, constructive, and tied to a genuine desire to see the product or culture improve. Someone who wrote 'the codebase is a mess and the on-call rotation burns people out — here's how they could fix it' is very different from 'this company sucks, don't work here.' Luna: So you're basically screening for people who can articulate a problem and offer a solution, even if they're frustrated. That's a skill set in itself. Lucas: Right. And this connects to a broader hiring principle that I think gets overlooked: honest candidates who point out flaws upfront are actually lower risk than candidates who tell you exactly what you want to hear. Because if someone joins and the reality doesn't match the rosy picture they painted in the interview, they'll be disengaged fast. The critical candidate already knows the warts. They're choosing to join despite them — or even because they see an opportunity to fix them. Luna: That's a fascinating reframe. The standard advice is 'sell the company, make the candidate excited.' But you're saying that might backfire. Lucas: Exactly. And there's research to back this up. A study from 2022 in the Journal of Applied Psychology looked at what they called 'pre-entry knowledge' — how much a candidate knows about a company's negative aspects before joining. The study found that candidates who had accurate, specific knowledge about the company's downsides — things like poor work-life balance in certain teams or legacy tech debt — had higher job satisfaction and lower turnover after six months compared to those who only had positive information. Luna: Because they weren't blindsided. They made an informed choice. Lucas: Exactly. And that's the mechanism here. When you hire someone who already knows your flaws, you're essentially getting a candidate whose expectations are calibrated to reality. The onboarding shock is gone. Luna: But how do you operationalize this without just trawling Glassdoor all day? I mean, most hiring managers don't have time to manually hunt for critics. Lucas: You don't need to. A simpler version is to change how you write your job postings. Instead of only listing the perks and mission, include a short, honest paragraph about the challenges. One company I know — a B2B fintech — added a 'what's hard about this role' section to their senior engineer posting. It said things like 'you'll be working on a legacy payment system that was built in 2015 and has some serious technical debt, and the compliance team will sometimes slow down releases.' They saw a 25 percent drop in total applicants, but the ones who applied were much more likely to accept an offer and stay past a year. Luna: So you're self-selecting for people who can handle the reality. That's clever. But I still wonder about the risk of hiring someone who's just negative in general — a personality issue, not a specific complaint about the company. Lucas: That's the distinction I mentioned earlier. There's a difference between a critic and a cynic. A critic points at a specific problem and often has an idea for improvement. A cynic says 'everything is broken and nothing will change.' In the PagerDuty experiment, they had a two-step filter. First, they looked for reviews that named a concrete issue and offered at least a hint of a fix. Second, during the interview, they asked the candidate to elaborate on the review — not to defend it, but to discuss it as a case study. If the candidate couldn't have a calm, collaborative conversation about the problem they'd raised, that was a red flag. Luna: So you're testing both their problem-solving skills and their ability to communicate constructively. That's a pretty rigorous screen. Lucas: It is. And it surfaces candidates who are often overlooked by standard recruiting. Because the typical recruiter might see a negative Glassdoor review and think 'toxic candidate.' But what if that candidate is actually deeply invested in the space? They cared enough to write a detailed review. They probably know your competitors inside out. They might be exactly the person who can improve the thing they complained about. Luna: I've seen this play out in a different context too. My friend works at a marketing agency, and they hired a former client who had publicly criticized their campaign results on LinkedIn. It felt awkward at first, but that person ended up overhauling their analytics framework within three months. The critique wasn't personal — it was about the data. Lucas: That's a perfect example. And it highlights something else: hiring critics can also improve your diversity. Not in the traditional demographic sense — though it might — but in cognitive diversity. You're bringing in someone who thinks differently, who isn't afraid to dissent. That's exactly the kind of person who prevents groupthink. Luna: But there's a reputational risk, isn't there? If other candidates see you hiring people who wrote negative reviews, does that encourage more public criticism as a backdoor to a job? Lucas: That's a fair concern, but I think it's unlikely at scale. Writing a detailed, constructive review is still work. Most people won't do it just to get a recruiter's attention. And if they did, the interview process would still filter them. You can't fake genuine insight about a company's internal problems if you don't actually have it. Luna: True. And the companies that have done this — like PagerDuty and a few others — they've been transparent about it. They'll say 'we actively recruit people who challenge us.' That actually becomes part of their employer brand. It signals that they value candor. Lucas: Exactly. And that's a strong signal to the kind of candidates they want. So if you're a hiring manager listening, I'd suggest a small experiment. Don't start with Glassdoor. Start with your own job postings. Add one paragraph about the real challenges of the role. See how the applicant pool changes. Then, if you're brave, look at the reviewers who had something useful to say and see if they're open to a conversation. Luna: I like that. A low-risk first step. And if it works, you've got a pipeline that your competitors probably aren't even considering. Lucas: Right. And speaking of pipelines — these conversations we have on the show, they're part of what keeps us thinking about hiring differently. If they've moved your work forward in some small way, a couple of dollars a month is genuinely what keeps them going. Buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo, if you've gotten something out of them. Luna: Yeah, it's a tiny thing that makes a real difference. Keeps the show ad-free and lets us spend time on the weird experiments like this one. Lucas: Exactly. So back to the practical side — one last point. The critics you hire will often outperform because they're intrinsically motivated to fix the thing they complained about. It's a personal mission for them. That's a powerful driver. Luna: But you have to give them the autonomy to actually fix it. If they come in and you don't let them touch the legacy system they criticized, they'll leave faster than anyone else. Lucas: That's the flip side. You're making a promise when you hire a critic: 'We heard you, and we want you to help us improve.' If you don't follow through, you've burned a bridge with someone who could have been a champion. So only use this approach if you're genuinely ready to act on the feedback. Luna: So it's not a hiring tactic — it's a culture tactic disguised as a hiring tactic. Lucas: Exactly. And that's why it works when it works. It forces the company to be honest with itself first.